Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reportedly told corporate employees that they were expected to be present at least three days each week, shelving the work-from-home setup.

This is a change from the former Amazon policy, which allowed managers to set their own requirements for how frequently their staff members needed to be in the office.

The CEO released the memo on Friday, Feb. 17.

Back to Office

At a meeting earlier this week, Jassy and the S-team, a group of top executives from almost all aspects of Amazon's business, concluded that workers should be present "the majority of the time" or at least three days per week.

According to CNBC, they came to this decision after weighing the potential benefits to the company's culture and the employees' opportunities to learn from and communicate with one another.

On May 1, Amazon will officially start the transition. Jassy noted that certain positions, such as those in customer assistance, would be an exception to this policy.

"It's not simple to bring many thousands of employees back to our offices around the world, so we're going to give the teams that need to do that work some time to develop a plan," Jassy said in a memo sent on Friday. 

"We know that it won't be perfect at first, but the office experience will steadily improve over the coming months (and years) as our real estate and facilities teams smooth out the wrinkles, and ultimately keep evolving how we want our offices to be set up to capture the new ways we want to work."

Since the Covid-19 outbreak has subsided, more businesses have lately summoned their staff back to the workplace, either full-time or for several days a week. 

Certain employees at Google and Apple have been compelled to go to the office since last year. Meanwhile, Disney's hybrid workers have been required to report to the office four days a week since January.

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Cost-cutting Stage

Amazon is now going through a phase of cutting costs due to declining revenues and a deteriorating economic outlook. As a result, the company is encouraging its staff to spend more time in the office. 

Over 18,000 individuals were let off at Amazon, making it the company's biggest round of layoffs ever. The firm also put a hold on recruiting new employees. 

In addition, it has canceled a number of research initiatives.

As Jassy put it, being back in the workplace means more chances to have brainstorming sessions and come up with new solutions.

He believes that some of the greatest ideas had their breakthrough moments when people stayed behind in a meeting and worked through concepts on a whiteboard. He says the best inventions also emerge when they walked back to an office together on the way back from the meeting and popped by a teammate's office later that day with another thought.

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