Amazon put a stop to remote work, demanding that staff return to office 5 days a week

Amazon bids their remote work policy goodbye, as employees are expected to return to office five days a week starting from the beginning of 2025.

In a memo sent to staff on Monday, CEO Andy Jassy said "we have decided that we're going to return to being in office the way we were before the onset of COVID."

Jassy added that the experience of a three day mandate has "strengthened our conviction about the benefits" of in-office work. Jassy observed that it was easier for teammates to learn, model, practice, collaborate, brainstorm; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and teams tend to be better connected to one another.

During the pandemic, many companies have allowed their employees to work from home, leaving many of the downtown offices nearly empty. But some tech firms are beginning to mandate employees to return to their offices two or three days per week.

In comparison to other companies, Amazon has taken a tougher stance following the normalising of the pandemic. Amazon employees are even revealing how Amazon has required some of them to report to, in some cases, distant offices or move to the Amazon headquarters in Seattle to keep their job.

Some employees who were consistently out of compliance with the existing three-day mandate were also told they were "voluntarily resigning", and were locked out of their Amazon system.

And let's just say that workers weren't thrilled. A vocal group of employees have expressed that working from home had made them more effective and it spares time and money for them to travel to work.

In May last year, workers at Amazon's Seattle headquarters staged a protest in response to the company's climate policy, layoffs and a return to office mandate.

In addition to the new work from home policy, Amazon is also eliminating a prior programme that allowed workers the option to work from anywhere for four months per year.