Amazon to let managers decide on remote working policy for individual teams
CEO Andy Jassy announces relaxation of working policy in memo to employees
Amazon is to let individual team directors decide how much time its corporate employees can work away from the office, CEO Andy Jassy has announced.
The tech giant had hoped to welcome employees back to offices by September before pushing the date back until January but now says team directors will be able to make the decision on how often teams need to be in the office.
"For our corporate roles, instead of specifying that people work a baseline of three days a week in the office, we're going to leave this decision up to individual teams," Jassy said in a memo.
"This decision will be made team by team at the director level. We expect that there will be teams that continue working mostly remotely, others that will work some combination of remotely and in the office, and still others that will decide customers are best served having the team work mostly in the office.
"We're intentionally not prescribing how many days or which days - this is for directors to determine with their senior leaders and teams.
"The decisions should be guided by what will be most effective for our customers; and not surprisingly, we will all continue to be evaluated by how we deliver for customers, regardless of where the work is performed."
Jassy added that the company's employees should be "close enough to their core team that they can easily travel to the office for a meeting within a day's notice".
The new policy marks a significant shift from Amazon's very first announcement on remote working earlier this year, which said an "office-centric culture" would once again become the baseline post-pandemic.