Amazon-Employees should soon return to the office five days a week. Working together is more efficient and brings the teams closer together, argued CEO Andy Jassy (56) in an email to employees.
At Amazon you are currently allowed to work from home two days a week. Now there is a desire for a “Return to Office” movement, at least in management. Returning to the office. The new regulation should apply from the beginning of January so that employees can adapt their living conditions to it, wrote Jassy. “As we look back over the past five years, we continue to believe that the benefits of working together in the office are significant,” the memo, which Amazon also posted on its website, continued.
At the same time, as before the corona pandemic, it will be possible to sometimes work from home, for example if a child is sick or you want to concentrate on a work task. At the two headquarters of the world’s largest online retailer in Seattle and Arlington near Washington, permanent workstations are to be introduced again instead of the usual desk bookings.
Call back to the office accompanied by subtle threats
After offices remained largely empty for months at the height of the corona pandemic, many companies began gradually bringing employees back from home offices. For example, in February 2023, Amazon asked all employees to return to the office for three mandatory days, which led to some protests from workers. A few months later, Jassy said that employees who were unhappy with the change should learn to “be different and get involved.” He also made a subtle threat, saying it “probably wouldn’t work” for those who refused to do so.
In Seattle, where Amazon, among other things, has several high-rise buildings in the city center, working from home resulted in a loss of sales in shops and restaurants. Other US technology companies like Apple found a balance with being in the office three days a week.
There are also efforts in the management ranks of German companies to promote the “Return to Office” trend. From software company SAP above Volkswagen from Telekom to Deutsche Bank, it is primarily large corporations that want to fill their offices with more people again. There is sometimes bitter debate about the compulsory attendance requirement, including in court. At the beginning of July, the SAP Group agreed with its works council on an interim solution with two mobile working days per week and the establishment of a conciliation board on the topic of “mobile working”.
Meanwhile, a long-term study by the University of Konstanz showed: As of 2024, only 9 percent of employees want to work exclusively in the office, the majority (73 percent) want a mixed form, and almost a fifth only want to work at home. The study also shows that a compulsory attendance requirement, as many companies are currently considering, could backfire. According to the study, only one effect is certain: if you force people back, their level of exhaustion increases.