It’s back to the office full time for the majority of Amazon employees across the globe, but for some who work for the tech giant and online retailer it’s not a welcome change.
“The people on my team are very upset about this,” said CJ Felli, a system development engineer at Amazon Web Services based in Seattle.
Amazon’s corporate employees worked mostly remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2023, they were allowed to work a hybrid schedule — two days remotely and three days in the office.
As of Jan. 2, that in-office requirement has changed to five days per week.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a letter to employees in September that the company is “going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID.”
Employees concerned about lack of data
“What we’ve been told is that it leads to increased collaboration between teams and innovation,” said Felli in an interview with CBC News. “But whenever we ask for data, which is famously Amazon’s bread and butter, they never are willing to provide it.”
Felli has been speaking out against this latest return-to-office mandate, along with 523 other Amazon employees who penned a letter to the CEO of Amazon Web Services, Matt Garman, saying they are “appalled” by the “non-data-driven explanation” for a five-day in-office mandate and expressed the benefits of remote work in the letter.
Felli believes employees are happier and productive working from home and would like to maintain that flexibility.
“I do most of my focused work at home, and I find that breaking up of the monotony personally really helps me out,” he said.
What workers want
About 18.7 per cent of employed Canadians worked mostly from home as of May 2024, according to Statistics Canada. That’s about six per cent lower than May 2021, but remains more than twice as high as it was before the pandemic.
A flexible workplace is a big draw for workers, according to a workplace trends report from global staffing agency Robert Half.
About 40 per cent of the employees surveyed said they preferred hybrid work, spending two to three days per week at the office. Employers who were surveyed said they would prefer their teams to be in-office four days per week.
“That dance between the employee and employer is suggesting that we’re still on a journey to perfect that mix,” said David King, senior managing director at Robert Half in Toronto.
The online survey conducted in June 2024, included responses from 1,800 hiring managers and more than 1,750 workers across the finance and accounting, technology, marketing, legal, administrative and customer support and human resources professions in Canada.
Hybrid work is still a priority for some companies — 37 per cent of the managers surveyed are offering hybrid jobs specifically to attract skilled talent.
According to job listing website Indeed, the percentage of job postings in Canada mentioning remote/hybrid work has remained steady over the past two years.
“There’s an advantage to whatever allows your workforce to be fully engaged. And today that appears to be a form of hybrid,” said King.
Workplace tug-of-war
Amazon is one of the largest companies returning to entirely in-person work, but there are others making similar moves.
In September, Dell asked its global sales team to come into the office five days a week in order to deliver “the best innovation, value and service” to their customers, according to a statement emailed to CBC News.
AT&T rang in the new year by eliminating hybrid work, requiring staff to work onsite.
Staff at Calgary fintech Gigadat have been back in the office five-days per week for several years.
“We were probably one of the first companies to bring people back,” said Cliff Nywening, Gigadat’s chief operating officer, explaining the main motivators were improving employee mental health and increasing productivity.
“Being able to have a spontaneous meeting just adds a lot of value,” he said.
During the start of the pandemic, Gigadat’s staff of over 100 people were allowed to work remotely and then hybrid, but the company quickly transitioned back to fully in-person.
“Even when you have somebody that is maybe working from home, they’re disconnected from that conversation when you’re all around that boardroom,” said Nywening, “that face-to-face is so important.”
Though he admits it wasn’t an easy decision to have everyone come back and wonders if they lost some employees as a result.
Challenges ahead for Amazon
But he’s glad his company made the move early on and can see the challenge ahead for Amazon.
“The longer that you’ve had this hybrid remote experience, the tougher it will be to pivot back to, you know, somewhat of a normal in-office work experience,” said Nywening.
Felli, the Amazon employee, still believes the future is hybrid and he’s hoping his employer will reverse course.
“Our whole bread and butter is selling products to people remotely and selling products to people who want to work remotely. So if we can’t make remote work, then what are we selling?” questioned Felli.
“It is kind of a catalyst to encourage me to leave.”
