New York — Amazon employees have been expressing their concerns about the company’s return-to-office policy for quite some time now. However, it seems that CEO Andy Jassy has reached his limit.
During a recent internal Q&A session, Jassy made it clear that it was time for employees to “disagree and commit” to the policy, which requires corporate employees to be in the office three days a week.
The phrase “disagree and commit” is one of Amazon’s leadership principles, frequently used by the company’s founder and current executive chairman, Jeff Bezos.
Jassy emphasized that if employees can’t embrace this principle, it may not be the right fit for them at Amazon. He also highlighted the importance of maintaining consistency among employees regarding office attendance.
Business Insider initially reported Jassy’s comments, which were later shared by Amazon.
The current office attendance mandate, implemented in May, represents a departure from Amazon’s previous policy that allowed team leaders to determine their teams’ work arrangements. However, the company clarified that the prior policy was not intended to be the norm and referred to a blog post by Jassy in 2021, where he mentioned ongoing adjustments based on new information.
When announcing the updated policy, Jassy explained that it was informed by observations during the pandemic and conversations with leaders from other companies. According to him, in-person engagement and collaboration were found to be more effective.
However, many employees remain unconvinced. In May, hundreds of Amazon employees protested the new policy during a lunchtime demonstration at the company’s Seattle headquarters. At that time, an internal Slack channel advocating for remote work had amassed 33,000 members.
Some employees have also requested data to support Jassy’s claims. During the session, Jassy mentioned that the company’s leadership analyzed available data and found that meetings were not as effective when conducted remotely. He acknowledged that Amazon has made significant decisions in the past without perfect data, citing examples such as the creation of an online marketplace for sellers and the development of AWS, its cloud computing unit.
In July, Amazon introduced a policy requiring certain employees in smaller offices to relocate to larger city offices, as reported by multiple media outlets.
With a global workforce of 1.4 million, Amazon has not disclosed the exact number of employees working in office settings versus those in warehouses and other locations.