Employers that mandate employees return to a five-day, in-office workweek may see workers resigning or ‘quiet quitting,’ says Dror Poleg, an economic historian and former technology and private equity executive.
Last month, Andy Jassy, Amazon.com Inc.’s chief executive officer, announced in a memo that employees will be required to work from the office five days a week as of Jan. 2, 2025. Following the announcement, a survey by Teamblind Inc. found nearly all (91 per cent) of Amazon’s office-based workers were dissatisfied with the decision.
The survey, which polled more than 2,500 Amazon employees, also found four in five said they knew someone at the company who was considering looking for another job because of the in-office work policy and a third (32 per cent) knew someone who had already quit in response. The change comes three years after the organization previously said it would allow its corporate and technology employees to continue working remotely two days a week following the lifting of coronavirus pandemic restrictions.
Read: Amazon allowing remote work two days per week post-pandemic
“Of the short history of this phenomenon of the last two to three years, we’ve seen that when companies want to cut their head count, one of the first things they do is make their return-to-office policies stricter,” says Poleg.
Notably, Jassy also said the organization planned to flatten departments and increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15 per cent by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
The consequences of such a drastic return-to-office policy could lead to Amazon losing talent or finding itself falling behind competitors when it comes to recruiting new employees, says Poleg. “If you want to go to the opposite end of the spectrum, Nvidia Corp., probably the hottest company right now [that is] actually performing, delivering growth revenue, reinventing the wheel [and] developing stuff that is really innovative [is] taking a much more liberal approach when it comes to remote working or flexible work hours [and] really empowering individuals and small teams to figure out what works best for them.”
These types of rigid workplace policies come with a tradeoff in terms of the types of employees they’ll have access to, he added.
Read: 43% of U.S. workers would rather get a divorce than return to office: survey
A recent survey by LiveCareer, which polled nearly 4,000 workers, found roughly half (49 per cent) of employees admitted they no longer enjoy traditional office work. Three-quarters (71 per cent) of respondents said they now favour fully remote work, with women showing a stronger preference than men (73 per cent compared to 63 per cent).
Poleg says women and people from equity-deserving groups feel uncomfortable in one-size-fits-all office spaces and tend to prefer or, in some cases, may need more flexibility in the workplace. “They are the first casualties of these type of moves.”
When employers are in a war for talent and need to hire exactly the right person for a specific job, reducing their talent pool could cause harm to their organization. “The tendency for the most innovative fastest-growing companies over the last 10 years . . . was to hire for . . . more locations and embrace more flexibility because that’s what they need to do in order to access the best [employees]. . . . The stricter your office policy, the less likely you are to find that person.”
Read: Employers should walk, not run back to onsite working: experts