Amazon relaxes remote working policy under new CEO
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has announced that the decision to return to office will be left to the directors of individual teams.
The tech giant had previously said it wanted staff in the office three days a week, a policy that was announced shortly before Jassy took over from Jeff Bezos in July.
Those plans were pushed back to 2022 due to the spread of Covid-19 across the US. However, in a message to employees, Jassy said he acknowledged that due to uncertainty and different circumstances, decisions on whether to return to the office would now be made on a team-by-team basis at a director level.
“First, none of us know the definitive answers to these questions, especially long term,” Jassy said in a statement. “Second, at a company of our size, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for how every team works best. And third, we’re going to be in a stage of experimenting, learning, and adjusting for a while as we emerge from this pandemic. All of this led us to change course a bit.”
Last week, the new CEO told a crowd at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle that the company could do more to treat employees better, specifically calling out the company’s approach to the pandemic as something where it “fell short”.
Instead of specifying the number of days in office, corporate roles will have their working from home allowance decided by a team director. As such, Jassy said that Amazon expects teams to still continue working “mostly” remotely, while others will form some combination of home and in office. He also suggested that there will be those that chose to come into the office every day.
“We’re intentionally not prescribing how many days or which days – this is for directors to determine with their senior leaders and teams,” Jassy added. “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.”
Similarly, Google also recently extended its remote working plans into 2022, saying it would wait for a clearer picture of the pandemic in the US before it made a final decision.
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