Amazon CEO Andy Jassy ordered a full-time return to the office, but research indicates he will reverse course next year
Amazon will force its employees to return to the office five days a week starting in January, sparking a global panic among professionals who fear their employer will do the same. But in reality, research suggests that the tech giant’s CEO Andy Jassy could soon reverse this stricter stance.
Flex Index analyzed the office space needs of more than 9,000 companies (which collectively employ more than 100 million people) and found that about half of U.S. companies asked workers to return to the office last January.
Yet only a third of them respected their strict five-day mandate in office.
Today, 37% of employers offer hybrid work, compared to 20% in early 2023.
Despite the growing number of headlines about companies forcing employees back into the office, companies like Amazon are actually the exception to the rule. In fact, data shows that workplace flexibility is generally on the rise.
While 50% of companies already offered their employers some flexibility regarding the workplace last year, this figure has now risen to 69%.
As one disgruntled Amazon employee consoled on Reddit: “My company got really strict about RTO last year, insisting on 3 days in the office and laying off fully remote workers. 9 months later, they dropped that policy.”
They make a valid point: Separate research has shown that tech CEOs in particular have spent the past year walking back their RTO mandates.
Only 3% of tech companies now require employees to come into the office full time, down significantly from 8% last year.
A 5-day mandate can bring employees into the office 3 days a week
Amazon’s tightening of its RTO policy comes as bosses around the world grapple with employees who defy their hybrid policies.
In London, employers ask their employees to come into the office an average of 3.1 days a week, when employees actually only go 2.7 days.
Similarly, in New York City, workers are asked to work in the office 3.7 days a week, but only show up to work 3.1 days.
The report by the Centre for Cities think tank highlights that this model is followed in most major cities around the world, including Toronto, Singapore and Sydney.
Amazon is no stranger to workers defying the RTO: About 30,000 employees signed a petition protesting the company’s three-day work-hours mandate last year, and more than 1,800 have pledged to walk off the job to take a stand.
Since then, the company has tried to reassert its authority by giving managers the green light to fire employees who don’t show up to the office three days a week and asking remote workers to move closer to an office — or quit.
Yet just two months ago, the tech giant was still complaining about its employees circumventing the three-day office mandate, more than a year later.
“The data clearly shows that many companies, including Amazon, are imposing hybrid work policies, knowing that compliance with those rules will vary,” says Daan Van Rossum, author of the Future Work newsletter and founder of FlexOS. Fortune.
“They are playing a negotiation game, asking for five days to get three, because employees have become accustomed to the autonomy and productivity that hybrid work offers.”
Ultimately, despite Jassy’s call for workers to return “to the way things were before the pandemic,” Van Rossum points out that “in pre-pandemic offices, most people didn’t show up five days a week. Even then, office occupancy was typically 70%.”
“I expect the policy to ease, as this public display of ‘office nostalgia’ over the expected reality of offices – that they will still be half-empty even after the mandate comes into effect – will be visible to everyone.”
Has your company reversed its RTO policy? Fortune would like to hear from you. Email orianna.royle@fortune.com
