Amazon delays back-to-office mandate in several cities due to lack of office space

Amazon will slow a requirement that all employees work from the office in at least seven major cities, according to a new report from Bloomberg. the reason? The online retail giant simply doesn’t have enough office space for its employees to work.

Amazon first announced in September that corporate employees would soon have to work from the office five days a week, something that alarmed workers who have found many companies offering more flexible work-from-home arrangements since the start of the covid- 19 in 2020 The beginning of this new term of return to office was supposed to be the beginning of the new year.

But workers in at least seven cities have been told they won’t have to come to the office as often until more office space is found, according to Bloomberg. The cities include Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Nashville, New York and Phoenix, and it’s unclear how many of Amazon’s 350,000 corporate employees worldwide will be affected, though Amazon told Bloomberg that “the vast majority” of workers will return to the office on Jan 2.

Why does Amazon want workers back in the office? When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the move to a blog post on September 16, he threw out a bunch of buzzwords that didn’t really mean anything and were incredibly confusing. One sentence that sticks out was filled with so many commas and semicolons that you’d be hard-pressed to find any succinct sense in it at all:

I have previously explained these benefits (February 2023 post), but in summary we have noticed that it is easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice and reinforce our culture; collaboration, brainstorming and invention are simpler and more efficient; teaching and learning from each other is more seamless; and teams tend to be better connected to each other.

okay

What is Amazon’s real reason for doing this? There are two dominant theories. The first is that commercial real estate has suffered since the start of the COVID pandemic and the artificial support of real estate values ​​is helping the ruling class. It’s funny, of course, that Amazon is struggling to find enough office space in this scenario.

The second theory is that Amazon wants to make layoffs, but instead chooses to make things more difficult for employees as a way to get workers to leave on their own. When laying off corporate employees, it is often necessary to provide severance pay, but if someone leaves on their own, the company does not have to deal with these additional costs. This strategy is not new, but it seems to encourage the most in-demand employees to leave because they can find work at competing companies.

Actually a recent study found that companies with the strictest back-to-office mandates had higher turnover rates and lost their most senior and skilled employees. Employee turnover is three times higher than that of men, possibly as a result of women bearing a greater burden of child care and housework in the U.S.

When Amazon finally finds enough office space to house all its employees, workers will still be faced with the fact that modern office design is garbage. American businesses have built shared workspaces where people work individually and closed rooms that can be rented for large meetings that would be ideal for individuals. This creates unnecessary conflict in the office.

From Bloomberg:

Some workers say the company still struggles to hire people three days a week. In recent interviews, employees complained about working from shared desks, crowded corporate chairs and a lack of conference rooms for confidential conversations or team meetings. The company has added a feature to its room booking tool that requires workers to certify that they actually plan to use the space, an apparent effort to deal with squatters looking for a quiet place to work.

But what are you going to do? Work from home and actually get some work done? That’s not going to keep commercial property prices high, is it?