Amazon is requiring employees to come into the office five days a week. CEO Andy Jassy said in the memo: on monday.
The mandate to return to the office is a major change from the current hybrid policy, which requires employees to work in the office at least three days a week.
Amazon employees have until January 2nd to switch to the new policy.
Amazon will also simplify its corporate structure, particularly its management ranks, “eliminating hierarchies and flattening the organization,” Jassy said.
The Seattle, Washington-based company expanded rapidly during the pandemic, but when Jassy took over in 2021, he implemented cost-cutting measures and large-scale job cuts.
During his tenure, Jassy oversaw the largest layoffs in Amazon's 27 years since it went public.
As a result of the company's rapid growth, Amazon has hired many managers and “added more layers than we had before,” Jassy said.
These hierarchies clogged the food chain, leading to pre-meetings and ever more complicated chains of command.
“As such, we are asking each S-Team organization to increase their ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025,” Jassy wrote.
Jassy said the company has created a “bureaucracy mailbox,” or email alias, dedicated to rooting out unnecessary steps within the company.
In addition to tweaking the company's structure, Jassy said a major focus of the return-to-office mandate is creating an environment where employees can socialize.
“We want to operate like the biggest startup in the world,” says Jassy, ”which means a passion to constantly invent for our customers, a strong sense of urgency (most big opportunities are competitive!), a high level of ownership, fast decision-making, tenacity and frugality, close collaboration (inventing and solving hard problems requires working closely with your teammates), and a shared commitment to each other.”
So the five-day work week requirement is an effort to foster collaboration that was seen before the pandemic, making it easier for teammates to “learn, lead by example, practice and strengthen the culture,” Jassy said.
Jassy said the new mandate would work similarly to most office environments pre-pandemic: If an employee has an exceptional circumstance, like a sick child away from home, a home emergency or time away from home for meetings with clients or partners, it would be “understood.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
