‘Not a cost play’: Amazon CEO denies claims RTO mandates are ‘dismissals in disguise’

After Amazon’s announcement to implement a full return-to-office (RTO) mandate, theories circulated questioning the reasoning behind the decision, with some claiming it’s merely a voluntary layoff/redundancy ploy.

RTO mandates are continuing to circulate across media channels as organisations implement or consider implementing them. The fallout of these RTO mandate implementations has long been speculated, as the infatuation among workers with a remote/hybrid working model has grown to a level that many are unwilling to compromise on.

These speculations have jumped towards many claiming that the key reasoning behind organisations, such as Amazon, implementing an RTO mandate was that naturally, it’s going to cause some workers to walk out – thus allowing companies to avoid the public disparagement that often comes with mass redundancies, while also cutting costs.

This theory came to fruition quite recently, as multinational advertising company Publicis Groupe went through a wave of redundancies related to RTO compliance. It was reported by Emarketer that approximately 150 employees who failed to comply with the RTO notice were laid off.

In a previous HR Leader article, Michael Byrnes, employment law partner from the Sydney-based firm Swaab, explained the protections that employers have when enforcing these compliance changes.

“The legal starting point is that employees don’t have a right to work from home. They are required to attend the employer’s workplace during working hours. One exception to this is if there is an enforceable agreement (or contract term) between the employer and employee that the employee can work from home,” Byrnes said.

“The proposition that employees don’t have an inherent right to work from home is either not understood or deliberately ignored by some employees. Subject to limited exceptions, an employer can issue a legally enforceable direction to an employee to attend the employer’s workplace during normal working hours to perform their work. The merits of working from home (which can, of course, be substantial) are largely irrelevant to the legal analysis.”

The notion of this being a key reason behind the implementation of an RTO mandate reached Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy, who completely disregarded the claim.

“A number of people I’ve seen theorised that the reason we were doing this is, it’s a backdoor layoff, or we made some sort of deal with the city or cities,” Jassy said, according to Reuters.

“I can tell you both of those are not true. You know, this was not a cost play for us. This is very much about our culture and strengthening our culture.”

When Jassy first announced the news that Amazon was putting an RTO mandate in place, he referenced “strengthening our culture and teams”.

According to Jassy, Amazon’s culture has never looked stronger than when all staff are in the office.

“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.”

The decision to drive such a wedge between employees and employers under the guise of building “team culture” could be deemed an ironic venture, as there is numerous data that supports a hybrid working model, both on a wellbeing and productivity level.

As the terrain for flexibility becomes more contentious and the evidence of RTO mandates resulting in voluntary redundancies seemingly grows, disdain and distrust between employees and employers may continue to expand throughout workplace discourse.