Amazon To Penalise Staff Excessively Working From Home

Amazon is clamping down amid some push back against its return-to-office mandate, and warned employees that their office presence (or lack thereof) is being recorded.

The Guardian cited an internal email to staffers, in which Amazon warned it is tracking the office presence of its US staff and will penalise them for not spending sufficient time in the corporate workplace.

It comes as most tech companies have scaled back their remote working practices that came into force during the lockdowns imposed around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021.

Return-to-office

In February this year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy issued a return to the office order for the “majority” of the company’s 300,000-strong corporate workforce.

But this order received staff pushback, with some pointing out that Jassy had stated in September 2022 that Amazon would not follow others in the technology industry by ordering its corporate staff to return to the office, in a post Coronavirus world.

Disgruntled Amazon staff spammed an internal website, and an internal Slack channel, with comments expressing their opposition to the policy.

Amazon however mandated that corporate return to the office at least three days a week – beginning from 1 May 2023.

Also in May a hundreds of Amazon staff walked out in protest of the company’s return-to-office mandate, its layoff of 27,000 staff, and Amazon’s environmental record.

Amazon warning

Now according to the Amazon email staff members were alerted last week they were “not currently meeting our expectation of joining your colleagues in the office at least three days a week”, the Guardian reported.

The email was intended to be sent to workers who have come into the office fewer than three days a week for five or more of the past eight weeks, according to a follow-up message sent to employees that Amazon shared with the Guardian newspaper.

Some staff reported receiving the email by mistake and were encouraged to clarify their attendance with human resources, the Guardian reported.

Amazon is not alone in facing staff opposition, as many big name tech firms including Apple, Google and others sought to bring staff back into the office.

One Apple executive publicly resigned over the firm’s order to return to the office earlier in 2022.

In the post Covid-19 world, many tech firms adopted hybrid working practices, with staff working two or three days in the office, and other days remotely (often at home).