Employees at Amazon are enraged as the company restricts remote work, with some threatening to resign and others drafting petitions in response to a recent announcement that they must report to the office at least three times per week.
In a memo to employees on Friday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated that the company believes “teams tend to find ways to work through hard and complex trade-offs faster” when they are in the same physical location.
Hundreds of Amazon employees began joining an internal Slack channel called Remote Advocacy shortly after the announcement; the channel had over 14,000 members as of Tuesday, according to Business Insider.
Because of the new policy, nearly 80% of channel employees said they would begin looking for another job.
“This is going to be absolute chaos and divert everyone’s attention away from their work for probably a quarter, if not longer,” one disgruntled employee wrote. “It’s difficult to be productive when there’s so much uncertainty in our lives.”
However, the shift toward more traditional work arrangements comes as Amazon seeks to downsize amid macroeconomic turmoil and a drop in consumer demand caused by the lockdown-induced recession. Amazon has laid off approximately 18,000 employees in recent months and imposed a moratorium on new hires in the corporate workforce.
Employees in the Slack channel nevertheless drafted petitions against the return to office policy.
“We, the undersigned Amazonians, are responding by petitioning for the right to choose where to work, including remote locations,” an early version of the document said, according to Business Insider. The petition included survey data which found 56% of Amazon employees desire “monthly sync-ups in the office,” while 31% want to work in the office one or two days per week.
According to a Gallup poll, employees prefer remote work arrangements due to the time savings from avoiding commutes, as well as the flexibility to balance work and personal matters. However, the costs to employers can outweigh the benefits of attracting and retaining talent produced by virtual work policies: 85% of managers believe the shift to hybrid work “has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive,” according to a study from Microsoft.
According to Jassy and other executives, the lockdowns reinforced the importance of building meaningful relationships among team members. “When we’re in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues, it’s easier to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture,” he wrote to employees.
“When you’re in-person, people tend to be more engaged, observant, and attuned to what’s happening in the meetings and the cultural clues being communicated.”
Other companies, such as Walmart and Disney, have recently shifted away from virtual work arrangements. Employees of the former must work from physical offices at least twice per week, whereas employees of the latter must work from physical offices four days per week, preferably between Monday and Thursday.
Many companies have made allowances for top performers to continue working from home. Walmart will allow some employees to continue working remotely full-time while forcing others to relocate as technology hubs across the country close; Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a vocal opponent of virtual work arrangements, has stated that he would consider allowing “particularly exceptional contributors” at the automaker to work remotely.
