Amazon has ordered its near-300,000 corporate employees to return to the office full-time, with the tech giant also announcing plans to cut a number of manager positions.

Like most organisations, Amazon moved to remote working for its corporate workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early last year, it moved to pare this back, requiring workers to attend the office at least three times per week.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who replaced Jeff Bezos in the role in 2021, wrote to employees earlier this week announcing that from the start of next year they will need to work every day from the office.

“When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy said in a memo to staff.

“Before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward – our expectation is that people will be in the office, outside of extenuating circumstances.”

Those with reasons to not be in the office every day before the pandemic, or with a remote work exception, will be able to continue with these setups.

The new rules will take effect from 2 January next year.

“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,” Jassy said.

Shedding some layers

Jassy’s note also flags significant changes to Amazon’s corporate structure, with the shedding of some managers and layers within the business.

He said that “artefacts”, such as “pre-meetings for the pre-meetings for the decision meetings” will be scrapped.

“Most decisions we make are two-way doors, and as such, we want more of our teammates feeling like they can move fast without unnecessary processes, meetings, mechanisms and layers that create overhead and waste valuable time,” Jassy said.

Amazon’s leadership team will be required to increase the ratio of “individual contributors” to managers by at least 15 per cent by the end of the first quarter of 2025, under this new plan.

“We want to operate like the world’s largest startup,” Jassy said.

“That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency, high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply connected collaboration and a shared commitment to each other.”

This is expected to result in job cuts.

There have been several rounds of job cuts at Amazon in recent years.

In late 2022 the company announced that 18,000 roles would be scrapped, mostly from the e-commerce and human resources division.

Just months later, 9,000 staff were laid off from Amazon Web Services, Twitch, and the ad department.

At the start of this year, “several hundred” Amazon employees were laid off from its Prime Video division and MGM studios.

Some have speculated the new return-to-the-office mandate is a way for Amazon to thin out its workforce even more, knowing that many staff will quit.

A win or loss?

Nicole Gorton, director at recruiter Robert Half, says a back-to-office mandate can yield positive results.

“Having workers back in the office full-time can greatly benefit collaboration, connection and workplace culture,” she told Information Age.

“However, this hinges on the employer’s ability to justify these changes and clearly communicate how the return to in-office work will benefit not just the company, but the corporate culture – and the worker - as well.

“If employers fail to focus on the benefits and employee engagement, there could be repercussions, such as employees resigning due to resentment.”

Neal Woolrich, director advisory in research firm Gartner’s HR Practice, agreed, telling Information Age that any move to force workers back in the office “carries a steep cost”.

“These mandates are a source of conflict for employees and management, which isn't great, because it turns out the benefits of return to office prove to be modest at best; more they're high risk,” he said.

“Return to office mandates can increase employee engagement, but only slightly.

“It can also have a small positive impact on discretionary effort – the willingness of employees to go above and beyond.

“But those positive gains are far outweighed by a big drop in intent to stay – which is often an organisation’s most valuable employees.

“The groups most affected are high performers, women and millennials.”

Woolrich said high performers are especially resentful about having to show up at the office.

“We found they have a 16% lower intent to stay when they're required to do on site work, because mandates can feel arbitrary and can be interpreted as mistrust for management.

“The benefits of in office work aren't worth the risks of a rigid mandate.”

A return to the office

A few tech firms have moved to implement return-to-office mandates and get their employees back to the office following the rise of remote work brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research from earlier this year found that those who work from home devote about one-third of the time they save on not commuting to extra unpaid work, and that one in five people said working from home has made them a “lot more productive”.

Other research has found that the companies that do pursue a return-to-office mandate are at risk of losing key senior executives to rivals that have more flexible work structures, while another study found that a number of US companies that implemented return-to-work mandates lost senior managers to other tech firms.