No Plan To Force Employees To Return To Office, Says E-commerce Giant Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy

At a time when many companies around the world are adopting different strategies to gradually switch to hybrid model or completely return to office, e-commerce giant Amazon¡¯s CEO Andy Jassy has said that the company doesn¡¯t plan to order corporate employees to return to the office. He has been the CEO of Amazon since July 2021, with the position previously held by Jeff Bezos.

¡°We don¡¯t have a plan to require people to come back,¡± Jassy said on Wednesday at the Code Conference in Los Angeles. At this conference itself, Google CEO Sundar Pichai had hinted at potential layoffs to make the company 20% more efficient earlier this week.

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Coming back to Amazon, the e-commerce giant¡¯s tech workers were told to work from home in early 2020 as the COVID pandemic spread rapidly. In October , Amazon CEO Jassy had said that Amazon would leave it up to individual managers to decide how often workers would be required to come into the office, which marked a sharp reversal from its earlier goal of returning to an ¡°office-centric culture¡±, as per CNBC report.

And a couple of days back, on Wednesday, the 54 year old CEO said that most employees have returned to physical offices and are spending some days working from home. Certain teams tend to be at the office more often, such as hardware or creative units, while others, such as engineers, continue to work largely remotely, Amazon CEO added.

¡°I do think there are some things that are harder to do remotely,¡± CEO Jassy said. ¡°I think it¡¯s a little harder to invent remotely.¡±

E-commerce giant Amazon¡¯s stance on remote work seems to differ from some of its tech peers. Tech giant Google began requiring most employees to return to physical offices at least three days a week in April 2022, which generated some pushback among workers who opposed the mandate.

On the other hand, iPhone maker Apple had told some of its employees to come into the office three days a week starting this month, which too, received backlash from some employees who threatened to quit. And that¡¯s not all. World¡¯s richest person Elon Musk had given an ultimatum to Tesla employees in May 2022, to either return to work from office or quit.

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Also, Amazon CEO Jassy had previously said that the COVID-19 pandemic could leave a lasting impact on how offices are used, noting that it has already affected how Amazon hires employees. For example, Amazon is now more open to remote work, and will recruit employees from any location, rather than just focusing on areas where it has ¡°critical mass,¡± he reportedly said.

Also Read: 3 Out Of 4 Indian IT Sector Employees Not Coming To Office Despite Resumption, Reveals Survey

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