Amazon’s move to bring its headquarters workers back to the office has become a source of tension within the company, which employs more than 1.5 million full-time and part-time workers worldwide.
Last year, employees at the company’s Seattle headquarters staged a protest when the company tightened its restrictions on remote work during the pandemic.
Amazon subsequently fired the protest organizer, sparking claims of unfair retaliation and a dispute with labor officials.
In Monday’s message, Mr. Jassy said he was concerned that Amazon’s flexible work arrangements and too many layers of bureaucracy were diluting its corporate culture. Amazon has long prided itself on growing into a tech giant while maintaining the intensity of a startup.
Jassy, who replaced founder Jeff Bezos as CEO in 2021, has created a “bureaucratic mailbox” where employees can complain about unnecessary rules, and the company has asked managers to reorganize their organizations so they can oversee more people, he said.
Amazon said the change could result in job losses.
In addition to returning to the office five days a week, Amazon said it would introduce hot desking in the United States.
The company said employees can still work from home in special circumstances, such as when they have a sick child or a family emergency, as they did before the pandemic.
But Mr Jassy said unless an exemption is granted, “people are expected to be in the office unless there are extraordinary circumstances”.
