Amazon: Get Promoted or Miss Out – Don’t Ignore Return to Office Mandate!

The pandemic has forced many organizations to rethink and reconsider their workplace cultures. They have had to take extraordinary steps to protect their employees from the spread of Covid-19, including introducing work from home (WFH) practices and introducing safety practices at the office. Amazon is taking this one step further by mandating their employees to return to the office. This was done after they realized that while remote work may have been productive and saved costs, the loss of collaboration and customer-interaction could be severely damaging in the long term. Amazon has weighed the pros and cons of having physical and virtual presence of their workers and has concluded that the best way forward is to mandate their employees to return to the office. This was met with some opposition from employees, who are either uneasy about returning to the office, or are restricted by various travel restrictions enforced by their respective state governments. Amazon has responded to those concerns by offering limited WFH for some employees who may be unable to return to the office due to travel restrictions or other family commitments. Moreover, to further incentivize their employees to return to the office, Amazon has mentioned that those who do not comply with the return to office mandate will not be eligible for promotions and raises. This policy has caused some degree of angst amongst the employees, who haven’t had an increase in salary due to Covid economic constraints in the first place. A key takeaway from this decision has been that Amazon seems certain of the fact that physical presence in the office will yield better results in the long run. This signals a shift away from a strong foundation of WFH culture, which has been the existing norm in most large tech firms since the pandemic struck. It remains to be seen how employees adapt to this new norm, and how Amazon goes about managing the transition. What is certain however, is that due to this policy, there is now a larger emphasis on the importance of physical presence in the workplace.