Yahoo Finance Amazon orders 7,000 Aussie workers back into the office 5 days a week
Amazon staff will be required to return to the office five days a week from early 2025.
Amazon has told its staff that the days of work from home (WFH) are over. The tech giant said it will be mandating five days a week in the office starting from early next year.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy broke the news to employees in note and said the company would be returning to its pre-pandemic office requirements from January 2. The e-commerce giant, which employs about 7,000 people in Australia, has required staff to come into the office at least three days a week since May.
“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.
A Yahoo Finance poll of more than 3,000 people found that Australians were divided over a forced return to the office. The majority (54 per cent) thought it was fine "if the boss says so", but 46 per cent argued "not if they can work from home".
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Jassy noted it was easier for staff to learn, collaborate and brainstorm in the office, and allowed the company to “strengthen” its culture and teams 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,” he said.
Workers will be expected to be in the office unless there are “extenuating circumstances”, such as caring for a sick child or a household emergency, or they have requested exceptions from senior leadership.
Jassy said it will no longer be “a given” for staff to work remotely.
“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,” he acknowledged.
Jassy noted the company would be bringing back assigned desk arrangements and global facilities would be working on a plan to accommodate this.
Amazon previously told workers they may not get promoted if they didn’t come into the office as required.
Companies like ANZ, Suncorp Bank and Origin Energy have also warned staff that bonus's would be linked to office attendance.
The tech giant said there were a “variety of factors” that it considered when determining promotions and it expected employees to be “in compliance with company guidelines and policies”.
Attendance will reportedly be monitored by swipes of corporate badges, with employees required to return to the office even if there are not many members of their team in their location.
More Aussie workers return to the office
More Aussies are now required to work from the office more frequently.
Research from Robert Half found about two in five Aussie employees were expected to come into the office five days a week, which is double the number recorded last year.
The vast majority of Aussie companies (86 per cent) require staff to come into the office at least once a week, with five days the most common arrangement, followed by three days a week (17 per cent) and four days (12 per cent).
Managers to be reduced
Amazon also noted it was looking to reduce the number of managers in its organisation to “remove layers” and allow people to to “move fast”.
Jassy said the company planned to increase the number of people a typical manager oversees by 15 per cent by the end of March 2025.
It follows a global trend known as "The Great Unbossing" which has caused middle managers to be dumped to trim the fat of corporate hierarchies.
Middle management expert Rebecca Houghton explained to Yahoo Finance where she believes the trend will hit Australia the hardest over the coming months, with artificial intelligence potentially pushing more workplaces to jump on the trend.
"Very traditional organisations that have always had quite a fat middle, they're going to be under a lot of pressure to modernise," she said.
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