Why Amazon is mandating 5 days a week in office

In a letter posted to the global behemoth’s website, Amazon’s CEO explained the requirement for employees to return to the office for five days per week starting in 2025.

Increasingly, businesses across the country are toying with the idea of mandating full-time returns to the office for their workforces.

Last month, NSW public sector workers were ordered back to their desks, which one expert mused could create recruitment risks for the state’s government – a sentiment echoed in a recent study from the University of Pittsburgh.

Return-to-office mandates certainly appear to be a gamble – as one CFO told HR Leader this week, such policies by businesses are not the solution. Ultimately, while such office mandates may be inevitable, questions remain about whether businesses will be more or less productive with a workforce that is in the office full-time.

Now, one of the world’s biggest and most recognisable companies has taken the plunge and mandated that its global workforce return to their offices, in a move that is effective from 2 January 2025.

HR Leader understands that this also impacts Amazon’s Australian employees.

On Monday (16 September), Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy wrote to the global company’s staff, advising them of changes being made to, as he put it, “strengthen our culture and teams”.

“Our culture is unique, and has been one of the most critical parts of our success in our first 29 years. But, keeping your culture strong is not a birthright. You have to work at it all the time,” he said.

In recent months, Jassy advised staff, Amazon’s senior leadership team has considered whether the global company is set up to “invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other (and our culture) to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business that we can”.

On this question, he deduced, “we can be better”.

To that end, he continued, the company’s leadership has decided to return to pre-pandemic office arrangements.

“When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy said.

“We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another.

“If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits.”

Before the pandemic, Jassy went on, “it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward – our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances … or if you already have a Remote Work Exception approved”.

Where employees’ children are unwell, or there are family emergencies, or if one is required out of office for work duties, remote working arrangements will continue, he detailed.

The company will also be bringing back assigned desk arrangements for those offices that had them in the pre-COVID-19 era.

“We understand that some of our teammates may have set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments,” Jassy said.

To this end, Amazon’s new office mandate will commence in the new year.

“Having the right culture at Amazon is something I don’t take for granted. I continue to believe that we are all here because we want to make a difference in customers’ lives, invent on their behalf, and move quickly to solve their problems,” Jassy said.

“I’m optimistic that these changes will better help us accomplish these goals while strengthening our culture and the effectiveness of our teams.”