About two weeks ago, Amazon (AMZN) shook up corporate America by announcing a major change to its work culture.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed in a memo to employees on Sept. 16 that, starting on Jan. 5, 2025, employees will need to return to working in the office five days a week in order for the company to “deliver the absolute best for customers and the business. ” However, Amazon’s new policy appears to be backfiring, as the company’s employees are starting to look for the nearest exit.
Related: Amazon confirms fears about future of remote work with latest move
Amazon employees are planning to jump ship
According to a recent survey by the anonymous job review site Blind, about 91% of the 2,585 Amazon employees it polled said they are unhappy with Amazon’s decision to return to in-office work five days a week. Also, 73% of employees are considering searching for another job due to the new policy.
And 32% said they knew someone who had already quit their job at Amazon in response to the mandate.
Job candidates who recently applied for Amazon positions have even reportedly withdrawn their applications in droves due to Amazon’s updated RTO policy, according to a recent post on Blind.
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Unsurprisingly, Amazon’s new policy is causing employees to look for work elsewhere as many have uprooted their lives to fit a remote work schedule, which Amazon allowed during the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020. Just last year, in February, Amazon announced that employees would need to return to working in the office three days a week, a move that also caused pushback from employees.
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Amazon accused of ‘silently sacking’ its employees
Amazon’s new requirement to work from the office five days a week is even sparking speculation that this is the company’s way of silently sacking its employees in an effort to avoid layoffs, which can cost a company millions in severance and attract bad press.
Silent sacking occurs when a company creates a work environment with unfavorable conditions, such as overwork, stalled promotions, little support from management, etc., to push employees to resign rather than firing them.
Do you think Amazons 5 day RTO is due to them hoping people quit?
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This is not the first time Amazon has been accused of silent sacking. In January, a senior developer at Amazon Web Services revealed in a blog post that the company was allegedly making its employees “miserable” by overworking them and mandating that they work in the office three days a week.
“The negative press associated with layoffs wasn’t good. But the most effective way to reduce operational expenses was to get rid of all the expensive people,” wrote the employee in a blog post. “How could they force people to leave without severance packages or en masse? Making them miserable and silently sacking them.”
Amazon responded to those claims in a statement to TheStreet: “These inaccurate and misleading anecdotes just aren’t factual. We’ve repeatedly been clear about what drove our decision on RTO, and in February, we shared with employees that we’d be asking them to start coming into the office three or more days per week beginning in May because we believe it would yield the best long-term results for our customers, business, and culture.”
Meanwhile, September’s announcement from Amazon comes at a time when remote and hybrid job positions are in high demand. According to a recent survey from job recruitment firm Robert Half, 37% of U.S. job seekers are interested in having a fully remote job position, while 60% would prefer a hybrid role. Also, 31% of job seekers said that more work flexibility is a top motivator for their job search.
Amazon did not immediately return TheStreet’s request for comment.
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