Employees who oppose the obligation to come back to the office for at least three days a week will “probably not work out for you,” according to Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, who has taken a tough stance on the company’s return-to-office policy. Jassy told these employees that “it’s probably not going to work out for you.” The comments made by Jassy occurred earlier this month during a meeting in which he voiced his anger with staff who were not complying with the rules. Jassy’s remarks may be found here.
Jassy did not disclose specific statistics that drove his decision to force staff to return to the office during the meeting that was known to internally as a “fishbowl” discussion. Instead, he referred to it as a “judgment” call in his response. He made it quite apparent that workers who had issues with the policy were free to look for work elsewhere if they so desired.
According to Jassy, “It’s past the time to disagree and commit,” so they did. “And if you can’t disagree and commit, I also understand that, but it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon because we are going back to the office at least three days a week,” she said. “And if you can’t disagree and commit, I also understand that.”
It was disclosed by Jassy that he had discussed the matter with other CEOs, the vast majority of whom were in favor of having workers return to the office. As part of its return-to-office strategy, Amazon had already stated that it was asking some of its corporate employees to transfer to other cities. Those who rejected were given the choice to either look for another position within the company or to voluntarily leave their positions.
The implementation of this strategy has not been without criticism. During the month of March, around 30,000 employees of Amazon signed a petition asking Jassy to rethink the policy. In spite of the opposition, the plan to return to office was implemented on May 1st of this year.
In her explanation, Jassy stated that the choice made by Amazon was founded on observations that were obtained during the epidemic. The senior leadership team of the organization saw that greater in-person involvement among workers led to higher cooperation and better performance overall.
The unyielding stance taken by the CEO of Amazon about the return-to-office policy brings to light the larger conversations that are taking place across all sectors regarding the potential for employees to do their jobs remotely in the future and the degree to which employers will insist that workers be physically present in the office.