In a letter in September that resulted in employee backlash, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that many of the company’s 1.5 million global employees will have to return to the work office five days a week, removing the current hybrid work schedule employees have been working. 

Jassy’s ill-chosen, cheerful announcement read: “Hey, team. I wanted to send a note on a couple of changes we’re making to further strengthen our culture and teams.” The upbeat beginning did little to impact Amazon employees with joy, as the implication behind the CEO’s words was that either the 12 percent of Amazon staff who are fully remote would come back to the office full time or they could find employment elsewhere, according to a BBC report. 

The return to office (RTO) order prompted aggressive criticism, with distraught employees having issued an open letter of criticism over the new policy to Amazon leader Matt Garman. 

Now, Jassy is trying to defend Amazon’s move for employees to RTO, arguing that the company is not simply trying to shed some of its staff or prompt “a mass layoff in disguise,” as Inc.com’s Joe Procopio put it.

Defending Amazon’s RTO

CNBC received remarks made in an all-hands-on-deck meeting. Jassy stated that he knew some people had theorized the reason for Amazon’s RTO rule was a “backdoor layoff,” with others believing the company had “made some sort of deal with the city, or cities.”

“I can tell you both of those are not true,” Jassy asserted. Reuters also reported that during the meeting, Jassy tried to underline that the RTO rule was “not a cost play” and that it was “very much about our culture and strengthening our culture.” Jassy’s statements reflect similar words in his September letter to employees.

Frustrated Employees

Jassy’s statements still do not address the significant retaliation that Amazon has encountered from its workforce. Employees are still furious about the RTO rule and suspicious of leadership’s motives. 

In other statements reported by CNBC, many employees argue that they are just as productive, if not more, from home or in a hybrid model as they were in the office full time. Others believe the rule is in line with Jassy’s efforts to cut Amazon’s costs, asserting that the rule is really about forcing some employees to leave the company altogether, as it is in line with several pushes that have seen 27,000 employees laid off since 2022.

In a letter to Garman, the division boss for Amazon’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, around 500 staff members criticized Garman’s support of the RTO rule. The letter argued instead that “Remote and flexible work is an opportunity for Amazon to take the lead, not a threat.”

This argument by Amazon employees is, of course, already backed up by plenty of research that shows remote work can be highly efficient, an argument further supported in a recent report from the International Monetary Fund, which argues

“a fivefold increase in remote work since the pandemic could boost economic growth and bring wider benefits.” 

RTO and Workplace Culture

While Jassy believes that the RTO order will help build workplace culture, the move to force employees back into the office may have the opposite effect. What kind of workplace culture are Jassy and Amazon leaders advocating for if the culture expressed in the announcement is “do what we tell you or else”?

In the employee letter to Amazon, employees shared that they “want to work for a company and for leaders that recognize and seize this moment to challenge us to reinvent how we work.” The letter further argues that threatening the continued employment of staff that won’t, or simply cannot, return to the office full-time sends out a message that isn’t encouraging innovation or for staff to “collaborate, and be connected enough to each other,” as Jassy’s September announcement implied.