On January 2, Amazon's 350,000 firm employees will person to return to the agency 5 days a week alternatively of moving a hybrid schedule. After the announcement, labor speculated that the instruction was a measurement to get them to discontinue without general layoffs, but Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reassured labor astatine an all-hands gathering Tuesday that this was not Amazon's measurement of secretly forcing them to quit.
In a leaked transcript seen by Reuters, Jassy states that the move to wholly in-person activity was to fortify culture, not trim costs.
"A number of group I've seen theorized that the logic we were doing this is, it's a backdoor layoff, aliases we made immoderate benignant of woody pinch metropolis aliases cities," said Jassy, according to Reuters. "I tin show you some of those are not true. You know, this was not a costs play for us. This is very overmuch astir our civilization and strengthening our culture."
He added later that returning to the agency was "an adjustment" but said, "We're going to beryllium moving done that accommodation together."
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photographer: David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A July study showed that astir 1 successful 4 C-suite leaders hoped strict return-to-office mandates would unit labor to quit. Uncompromising return-to-office policies were sometimes layoffs successful disguise, the study found.
Related: Amazon CEO Mandates Employees Work successful the Office 5 Days Per Week Starting January: 'Strengthening Our Culture Remains a Top Priority'
At Amazon, 91% of 2,500 labor surveyed successful September said they were "dissatisfied" pinch the return-to-office argumentation and 73% indicated they were already reasoning astir looking for different jobs.
Returning to the agency has persisted arsenic a constituent of contention astatine Amazon complete the past fewer months. In October, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said successful a leaked meeting that location were "other companies around" for Amazon labor who didn't for illustration the return-to-office policy,
523 Amazon labor sent a letter to Garman past week protesting his remarks. These workers "have not only individual acquisition that shows the benefits of distant work, but person seen the extended information which supports that experience," the missive reads.
Related: Hybrid Workers Were Put to the Test Against Fully In-Office Employees — Here's Who Came Out On Top
One information constituent successful support of hybrid activity complete afloat in-person activity is simply a study published successful the technological diary Nature successful June. The study randomly divided 1,612 labor of recreation institution Trip.com into 2 random groups: One group worked afloat successful personification and the different worked 2 days per week from location and 3 days per week successful the agency successful a hybrid schedule.
The findings showed that discontinue rates dropped by one-third and occupation restitution accrued successful the hybrid group.
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