Amazon has called on thousands of its employees to return to the office for at least three days a week, starting May 1.

In a memo posted on Amazon’s company news site, and shared with employees, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said “it’s easier to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture when we’re in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues.”

The return-to-office plans come after Amazon updated its guidance in the second half of 2021 to allow Director-level leaders to decide where their teams would work.

Highlighting the differences between remote work culture and in-person work, Jassy said this week that the latter makes “collaborating and inventing...and learning from one another easier.”

Jassy continued: “Teams tend to be better connected to one another when they see each other in person more frequently. There is something about being face-to-face with somebody, looking them in the eye, and seeing they’re fully immersed in whatever you’re discussing that bonds people together.

"Teams tend to find ways to work through hard and complex trade-offs faster when they get together and map it out in a room," he said.

In the message, Jassy says he's “optimistic” that the shift to in-person work will “provide a boost for the thousands of businesses located around our urban headquarter locations in the Puget Sound, Virginia, Nashville, and the dozens of cities around the world” where Amazon employees go to the office.

Amazon is likely mindful of the huge investments it's made in physical office space of late. In Virginia, Amazon is in the process of building its second headquarters (HQ2), and as of April 2022, more than 5,000 employees were assigned to that location. "Our construction partners have put in more than 2 million hours of work and recently celebrated finishing the top floor—the 'topping out'—of Met Park, the first phase of HQ2," the company said at the time.

Jassy announced in January that 18,000 Amazon jobs would be cut, with a majority of roles being chopped from the Amazon Stores (Go, Fresh, Style) and PXT (People, Experience, and Technology) organizations.

By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved