The days of working from bed in your pajamas are over for Amazon’s corporate employees. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Monday said the company will return to having employees in the office five days a week, beginning in January.
“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” Jassy said in a message shared with employees. “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 — who replaced Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as chief executive in 2021 — said the company operates better when employees are in the office together.
“We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and teams tend to be better connected to one another,” he said.
Jassy said the company brass understands returning to the office five days a week will “require some adjustments” for some employees. The in-office policy will go into effect on Jan. 2.
Amazon, like many other major tech companies, allowed its corporate employees to work from home when the COVID pandemic began in 2020.
Jassy said the company was flexible with employees before the pandemic, allowing them to work from home if their kids were sick or if they had a “house emergency,” or if they needed a more quiet environment to code. He said that will still be the case, and some employees will be granted a “Remote Work Exception,” but that the expectation is for most employees to return to the office full-time in January.
“Before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward — our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances,” Jassy said.
Amazon’s stock is down about 1% on Monday to $184.74 per share. For the year, Amazon’s stock price is up 32%.
