Amazon will let its workers decide how much time they spend in the office

(Trends Wide Business) — Amazon is shifting its focus to remote working again, giving its workers more control over how much time they spend in the office and opening the door for more corporate workers to continue working from home.

The company will now allow each team to decide what policy works for them, from a full-time return to office life to staying mostly remotely, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a note to employees on Monday. .

“In a company of our size, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to how each team works best,” said Jassy. “For our corporate roles, instead of specifying that people work three days a week in the office, we will leave this decision up to each team,” he added, referring to Amazon’s previous policy on how often they would. require employees to be present in person.

Company directors will decide how often in-person work suits their teams, Jassy said.

“We expect there will be teams that will continue to work primarily remotely, others that will work in some combination remotely and in the office, and others that will decide that clients are better served if the team works primarily in the office,” Jassy said.

Amazon, like several other tech companies, has changed policies and dates of return to its offices several times during the coronavirus pandemic. The company previously postponed the reopening date for its offices, from September 2021 to January 2022, due to the delta variance.

The company will continue to have certain requirements on how close employees must be to the office, even if they primarily telecommute.

“At this stage, we want most of our people to be close enough to their core team that they can easily travel to the office for a meeting a day in advance,” Jassy said.

As with previous policies, the changes will apply only to Amazon’s corporate workforce and not its hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers and delivery drivers, most of whom have been working in person during the pandemic. Jassy also pointed out that there are workers in Amazon’s data centers and some brick-and-mortar stores who are unable to work remotely.

In his note, he praised these teams and said their work is “greatly appreciated.”