Tech giant's hard-line return-to-work announcement has many wondering if other employers will follow suit
Amazon Web Services (AWS) delivered a major blow in the ongoing war of RTO last week when its CEO, Andy Jassy, announced in a memo that it was bringing back five-day in-office work weeks.
Not surprisingly, the announcement has caused blowback from unhappy employees and countless articles questioning the CEO’s approach —as well as questions about whether other giants will follow suit.
“Some managers would like to just get everybody back in person, and that’s not going to happen,” says Trish Reay, vice-dean of the Alberta School of Business at the University of Alberta.
“I think that organizations are really looking for the energy that can result from good in-person workplace experiences, and so they don't really know how to get it virtually. I think that the intentions are good, the playing out of it is very difficult.”
Strict RTO mandates and accommodation
One of the main criticisms of the Amazon RTO policy and others like it is that it creates barriers for those who have benefited from remote and hybrid work, such as working parents.
“Our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances,” Jassy wrote in his memo, which could include: “If you or your child were sick, if you had some sort of house emergency, if you were on the road seeing customers or partners, if you needed a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment.”
Employers may not know it, but many employees likely have been silently self-accommodating while working remotely, according to employment lawyer Ioana Pantis of McMillan in Toronto.
“Remote work has provided some flexibility on hours of work for employees who may take breaks to pick up their kids from daycare, care for an elderly parent, or attend doctors’ appointments during the workday, and for some disabled employees, remote work may have reduced barriers to their participation.”
For these reasons, if employers are planning to mandate a full return to the office, Pantis says, they should be mindful of accommodation obligations and be sure to engage in an accommodation process, where necessary.
Amazon employees will return to working in the office five days a week beginning in January. https://t.co/nteUgcDukC pic.twitter.com/CLrNO1McVj
— FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) September 17, 2024
This means taking pushback from employees against RTO policies seriously when they involve caregiving duties or disability. Even if an employee is not immediately verbal about why they don’t want to return to the office, an employer may still have a duty to inquire, and to accommodate if there is a human rights-protected reason.
“I think most employees will push back, because they just don't like having to commute and coming into the office, and they've gotten into a comfortable routine working from home, and they feel that it can be more productive from home,” says Pantis.
“But there will be some employees who will have legitimate, human rights-protected reasons why a full time return to office might make their caregiving obligations more difficult or might make dealing with the limitations arising out of their disability more difficult.”
Communicating return-to-office mandates
Being proactive about RTO mandates can help mitigate this situation, she explains, by communicating with employees early about RTO plans and informing employees clearly about accommodation policies and how to make requests.
“We understand that some of our teammates may have set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments,” wrote Jassy in the memo. “To help ensure a smooth transition, we’re going to make this new expectation active on January 2, 2025.”
Citing the need to be “better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business,” Jassy explained how 15 months of being in-office three days per week had “strengthened our conviction about the benefits.”
“We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another,” he wrote.
Organizations searching for ‘water cooler effect’
Employers are still left with the problem of emulating the in-office collaborative experience and level of connection, which largely depends on unplanned encounters—what Reay calls “the water cooler effect”.
“I think we're still searching for what are good ‘virtual water coolers’,” she says. “They can't happen quite so serendipitously as walking around or managing by walking around. And I think people are still struggling.”
Attempts at emulating the “spark” of inspiration that happens with in-person environments, such as online “communities of practice” like committees or informal meetings, are short-lived, Reay says, because they require a volunteer to keep them going—a big ask for usually overworked staff.
But Reay stresses that in order for organizations to remain viable with fully engaged and productive workforces, rather than forcing employees to return to pre-pandemic norms, employers and managers should focus on being more intentional with the way they are connecting digitally.
Broad-strokes moves such as that by AWS, while perhaps motivated by productivity and collaboration, can negatively affect productivity in some cases, and cause mass resignations of valuable groups of employees. For example, an IWG survey from 2023 in the U.S. found that hybrid work is a “make-or-break benefit” for women.
Management responsible for improving remote employee experience
For Reay, an important aspect of this connectivity includes how employees are assessed and promoted. The consequences of poor communication and management practices with remote and hybrid workers can be dire, as valuable talent may be overlooked for internal promotion.
“Highly effective middle managers and managers are always watching for people who are well placed to move into the next levels of responsibility,” she says. “Managers need to develop a broader set of ways that they look for the characteristics… and not miss out on some people who really should be part of the next generation moving up.”
That’s one of the ways that it will create separation, Reay says, noting that employees who spend more time in the office often gain more recognition and access to advancement opportunities. And with younger employees, managers who aren’t embracing meaningful connection with remote and hybrid employees risk alienating—and losing—their talent.
“We collectively need to find better ways to get that connectivity electronically, and I think it has to be planned, though, because we can't wait for it to unfold in some sort of an organic way,” she says.
“It's unlikely that organic mechanisms are going to serve the purpose, and so whatever they may be, if it's if it's arranged communities of practice, or if it's arranged meetings on particular topics that are meant to be generative of ideas… they probably need managing. And it's going to take time, time and experimenting to see what can actually be effective, and right now, we’re a bit in murky land.”
