Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, announced this week a mandate requiring employees to return to the office full-time starting in January 2025. In his letter to Amazon employees, Jassy emphasized the importance of in-person collaboration, highlighting how it strengthens the company’s culture and helps Amazon maintain its fast-paced, inventive environment. The shift from the flexible, hybrid model established during the pandemic reflects Amazon’s goal to maintain a strong culture and optimize productivity by bringing workers back to their desks. However, there is evidence that this working method is not effective for every organization, and questions remain about how employees, especially the highly-valued ones, will react to this mandate.
The move toward returning to office is part of Amazon’s broader initiative to streamline operations, with the letter noting that increased collaboration will be critical in improving decision-making and reinforcing the company’s core values. Jassy explained that being physically present in the office encourages deeper learning, strengthens teamwork, and enhances the company’s ability to innovate rapidly. Although hybrid work has been in place for 15 months, Jassy believes that fully returning to the office will better align with Amazon’s long-term goals, particularly for major divisions such as AWS and Prime Video, where collaboration is key to success, Jassy contends.
Further, he states that Amazon’s culture is unique in its ability to be one of the largest tech companies in the world, and as the firm continues to innovate, Jassy feels that maintaining that culture will be critical. “Our culture is unique, and has been one of the most critical parts of our success in our first 29 years. But, keeping your culture strong is not a birthright. You have to work at it all the time,” he says. “We want to operate like the world’s largest startup. That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it’s a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply-connected collaboration (you need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems), and a shared commitment to each other.”
The ongoing debate between working from the office versus remotely is entering a phase where company employees are broken into two distinct classes. One is at the top of the organization, including executive leadership, with almost unlimited ability to choose where and how it works. The other is organizationally below the executive class, which the former instructs where it should conduct its work.
One example of this is when Brian Niccol stepped into the role of Starbucks CEO earlier this month, and he was offered the ability to work remotely. Unlike most employees, he wasn’t required to uproot his life and move to the company headquarters in Seattle. Instead, he could remain in his Southern California home and commute to Seattle via corporate jet as needed. He was even provided with a small office in Newport Beach, maintained at the company’s expense.
Office mandates are not new. Some organizations insisted their employees returned to the office just months after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. In successive installments, companies drew a line in the sand almost every quarter, however, mostly without much success. Anecdotally, it was understood that mandates existed, but employees continued to play possum with their employers and just continued in their hybrid or remote modes. Senior managers collectively decided that they were not in the business of tracking commutes but would rather focus on completing projects.
As early as the fourth quarter of 2020, surveys began to show that flexibility in work was not just feasible but actually desirable. The Registry reported in October 2020 that Colliers conducted a study of 5,000 workers in 25 countries and across 18 sectors. “This is the largest work-from-home experiment ever,” explained Vice President of Colliers’ Workplace Advisory Team Michelle Cleverdon in the report. “[The study] really was our innate wanting to understand what that work-from-home experience was, and how different workers were experiencing a very sudden event.”
The survey had some surprising results. Colliers found that 76 percent of interviewees reported that productivity levels remained the same or improved due to working from home. In comparison, 83 percent expressed a desire to work from home at least one day per week permanently. Sixty-seven percent noted an improvement in a work-life balance. When it came to connecting with others, 74 percent felt connected to their teams, while 87 percent of those interviewed stated that management was effective, even virtually.
Other surprising findings include the fact that those surveyed—92 percent—were satisfied with the extent to which technology allowed them to work from home. “Productivity, being that it was either sustained or improved, was a huge surprise,” said Cleverdon in 2020.
In a more recent study by the International Workplace Group (IWG) and Development Economics, it was uncovered that U.S. office workers with long commutes could save as much as $30,332 annually by adopting hybrid working practices. IWG is in the business of renting office space for flexible, short-term needs ideal for hybrid work forms, so one could argue this study was self-serving. However, the time spent commuting is a real hindrance for families and individuals, and the cost of this time can be quantified.
What employees think of Jassy’s letter can be gleaned from anonymous comments posted on websites such as Reddit. The tone of the comments responding to Amazon’s decision to require employees to work in the office five days a week is overwhelmingly negative, marked by frustration, anger, and disillusionment. Many users express concerns that other companies will follow Amazon’s lead, eroding the flexibility of remote or hybrid work. Common themes include criticism of Amazon’s workplace culture, suggestions that the return-to-office is a disguised layoff tactic, and dissatisfaction with leadership, particularly CEO Andy Jassy. There is also a strong emphasis on the environmental, personal, and societal benefits of remote work, contrasted with corporate motivations driven by tax incentives and real estate investments. Additionally, comments highlight concerns about the impact on work-life balance and employee well-being, with some proposing unionization as a solution to combat these corporate decisions.
As with anything else, the truth likely lives somewhere in the middle.
A study led by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom on hybrid work arrangements found that employees who work from home two days a week are just as productive and as likely to be promoted as their fully office-based counterparts. Conducted at Trip.com, one of the world’s largest online travel agencies, the research showed that hybrid work had no negative impact on productivity or career advancement while significantly improving employee retention. In fact, resignations fell by 33 percent among hybrid workers, particularly benefiting women, non-managers, and those with long commutes. The company’s decision to adopt a hybrid model saved millions in reduced attrition costs.
Bloom’s findings counter the criticism of high-profile business leaders who argue that remote work harms company culture, innovation, and mentoring. The study emphasizes that these concerns are often based on misconceptions, as managers initially expected a drop in productivity but later reversed their views. By leveraging randomized controlled trials, the research highlights that hybrid work arrangements are beneficial for both employees and companies when managed correctly, leading to improved performance, employee satisfaction, and retention without compromising culture or innovation.
“If managed right, letting employees work from home two or three days a week still gets you the level of mentoring, culture-building, and innovation that you want,” Bloom said in the report. “From an economic policymaking standpoint, hybrid work is one of the few instances where there aren’t major trade-offs with clear winners and clear losers. There are almost only winners.”
Joe Brady, former Walgreens Head of Real Estate, argues in his book Work Shop that instead of enforcing rigid policies, companies should leverage behavioral economics, specifically “choice architecture” or the “nudge” theory. Mandates often trigger psychological reactance, causing employees to resist, while nudges encourage desired behaviors without limiting freedom. Brady emphasizes redesigning workspaces, fostering continuous learning, and mentoring as effective nudges that improve productivity and satisfaction. As traditional return-to-office strategies fall short, more flexible, science-based approaches are necessary to align with modern workforce preferences and enhance overall organizational success.
Ultimately, Amazon’s focus on forcing a certain kind of work environment will be an experiment worth following. Unfortunately, given its propensity to secrecy, Amazon will likely provide very little transparency, so we will have to rely only on anecdotal evidence of Jassy’s success or failure. Yet, we should remember that progress in society has never been achieved without innovation and breaking of norms, and it’s striking that Jassy calls on stasis to drive vibrancy and growth in the company’s future.
