Amazon is giving individual teams more control over whether they return to offices in person.
Most recently, the company said it would not have employees back in the office full time until at least January 2022, citing the COVID-19 Delta variant surge. It had planned on a baseline of three days in the office and two days working from home, while corporate employees had the option to work up to four weeks fully remote per year. That's no longer the plan.
"For our corporate roles, instead of specifying that people work a baseline of three days a week in the office, we’re going to leave this decision up to individual teams," CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees today. "This decision will be made team by team at the Director level."
With this approach, Amazon expects "there will be teams that continue working mostly remotely, others that will work some combination of remotely and in the office, and still others that will decide customers are best served having the team work mostly in the office."
Decisions by directors "should be guided by what will be most effective for our customers; and not surprisingly, we will all continue to be evaluated by how we deliver for customers, regardless of where the work is performed," Jassy says.
These decisions have not yet been made and Jassy expects it'll take several weeks before each team has figured out what's best for them. "We’re anticipating that you’ll hear from your leaders about these specific plans before January 3, which is the date we set previously for people to start returning to the office at least three days a week," he writes.
That said, employees hoping to move to the middle of nowhere and not look back should take note: Jassy says teams should be "close enough to their core team that they can easily travel to the office for a meeting within a day’s notice," though Amazon will give corporate employees the option "to work up to four weeks per year fully remote from any location within your country of employment."
For those Amazon employees who can't work from home? "I just want to thank these teammates for their passion, commitment, and continued dedication. It’s highly appreciated," Jassy says.
As noted by GeekWire, which first reported the news, Amazon's decision could have a big impact on businesses in the Seattle area should Amazon employees stay away.
Silicon Valley has struggled with return-to-work plans in recent months, as the spread of the Delta variant and some people's refusal to get vaccinated has made it unsafe for workers to gather in the large, open office spaces the tech industry loves. Microsoft has effectively thrown in the towel for now; last month it "decided against attempting to forecast a new date."
Google has also extended WFH to 2022, though it has big plans for physical office space. A few weeks ago, it spent more than a billion dollars on the St. John’s Terminal site at 550 Washington Street in Manhattan.