Amazon issued a return-to-office (RTO) mandate in September calling its company workers again to the workplace by January 2. Over a month has handed because the mandate, and a few Amazon workers have but to see the workplace — as a result of Amazon cannot discover sufficient desks to carry its 350,000-person workforce.
In accordance with a Thursday report from The Wall Street Journal, Amazon has postponed RTO for employees assigned to dozens of U.S. places of work, together with New York Metropolis, Houston, and Atlanta, on account of a scarcity of house. Amazon workers assigned to some areas are nonetheless working remotely as they look forward to additional directions about when they need to be within the workplace full-time.
The San Francisco Bay Space is very brief on house. Amazon has 18 places of work within the area, however it lacks desks for a minimum of 800 workers. In response final month, an inside group submitted a proposal to Amazon’s amenities division asking for a brand new workplace to open within the space. In accordance with the WSJ report, a spreadsheet supporting the proposal has drawn signatures from near 600 Amazon workers.
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An Amazon spokesperson instructed the WSJ in an e mail that “the overwhelming majority” of company workers have desks and that solely “a comparatively small quantity” of Amazon’s “lots of of places of work” are “not fairly prepared” for absolutely in-person work.
Even in places of work with desk house, there have been logistics points with the RTO mandate, corresponding to the place workers ought to park. Jeff Ferris, principal technologist at Amazon Internet Providers Cloud, posted on X final month that when he tried to park his automobile within the workplace storage, he was turned away by safety.
“2,000 folks, 900 parking areas,” he wrote.
Haha, confirmed up for #RTO (er, return to workplace, not the same old Restoration Time Goal in my life of labor) and bought turned away by safety on the storage. “2000 folks, 900 parking areas,” she stated. ???
— Jeff Ferris (@trackzero) January 7, 2025
Some Amazon workers who’re again within the workplace report not having teammates who work from the identical location, difficult the targets of in-person work.
When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy first introduced the RTO coverage in September, he acknowledged that it could be “simpler for our teammates to study, mannequin, apply, and strengthen our tradition; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing [is] easier and simpler; educating and studying from each other are extra seamless; and, groups are usually higher linked to at least one one other.”
He reiterated the message at a leaked all-hands assembly in November, telling workers that the RTO mandate was about “strengthening our tradition” and fostering collaboration.
Amazon workers have been working in-person a minimum of 3 days per week since May 2023. Different firms with five-day in-office insurance policies embody Salesforce and Walmart. Amazon laid off dozens of workers in its communications and sustainability departments final month.
