Amazon has axed plans to bring corporate staff back to work in person by January 3 and will instead let managers plan how often their staff should come in – although employees should be close enough to their office to attend meetings with a day's notice.
The tech giant has 1.3 million employees worldwide, with hundreds of thousands in corporate positions, and ‘at a company of our size, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for how every team works best,’ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees on Monday to explain the new plans.
He added that the company would be testing the waters to see if its new plan works. ‘We’re going to be in a stage of experimenting, learning, and adjusting for a while as we emerge from this pandemic,’ he wrote.
Despite handing over the reins to team leaders, however, Jassy added, ‘At this stage, we want most of our people close enough to their core team that they can easily travel to the office for a meeting within a day’s notice.’
Amazon has pivoted on its plan to bring corporate staff back to work in person by January 3 and will, instead, let managers plan how often their staff will come in. CEO Andy Jassy explained the new plans to staff in a memo on Monday
Despite handing over the reins to team leaders, however, Jassy said that employees must be able to show up for meetings in person on a day's notice
That will scotch the plans of employees who hope to take advantage of the latest edict to work anywhere in the world.
But Amazon, whose global headquarters is in Seattle, says it will offer high-performing remote workers the chance to work from anywhere in their home country for up to four weeks a year.
Jassy said that employees should expect to hear about their team’s plan before January 3 – the date previously set for them to begin returning to the office.
Amazon expects that some teams will continue working from home on an almost regular basis, while others will have more of a hybrid model and some will be in the office full-time.
That will depend on ‘what will be most effective for our customers; and not surprisingly, we will all continue to be evaluated by how we deliver for customers, regardless of where the work is performed.’
Employees will also have the option to work for up to four weeks from another location in the country in which they’re employed, which Jassy said many employees have done through the pandemic and found ‘reenergizing’ and ‘inspiring.’
He closed the letter by writing, ‘As mentioned earlier, these are unusual times and we’re all learning together what we believe is the best way to work together to make customers’ lives easier and better every day. And with it being so early in our mission, with lots of invention and change in front of us, you can bet that we will continue to adjust as we keep learning what makes most sense for our customers and teams.’
Jassy became the new CEO of Amazon last July, replacing company founder Jeff Bezos
Amazon’s decision contrasts those of other tech giants that have postponed return-to-work plans over the past two months over concerns regarding to
