Amazon Orders Workers Back To Office 5 Days A Week

In what it claims in a move to "strengthen our culture and teams", Amazon has ordered employees to return to the office five days a week.

Many employees were fully remote during the pandemic and many worked hybrid with three days in the office for the past 15 months.

"When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant," CEO Any Jassy told employees in a memo on Monday.

He cited collaborating, brainstorming and inventing as simpler and more effective in person.

Units that were given assigned desks will return to that system. Locations that had shared desk arrangements will continue to operate that way.

The return to full-time in-office will begin on Jan. 2, 2025.

"We understand that some of our teammates may have set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments," Jassy wrote.

He also announced that the company has determined that it has too many managers that slow down decisions and has led to too many meetings.

Amazon wants to remove layers of management and flatten the organization chart.

The goal is to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15%. Jassy did not elaborate if the changes meant that some managers would face losing their jobs.

Jassy created a "Bureaucracy Mailbox" for any worker to highlight examples of bureaucracy or unnecessary processes.