Amazon’s office policy hasn’t moved the needle on RTO
A month after Amazon said it was calling workers back to the office full time, office-occupancy rates for everyone else have gone down.
When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced last month that one of the largest employers in the country would require workers to return to the office five days a week, some speculated that it could spell the end of remote and hybrid work. Not so fast.
Data from office-keycard company Kastle shows that office occupancy has actually gone down slightly since the announcement. Last month, the 10-city average office-occupancy rate was 50.99% and now it’s 50%. In other words, companies haven’t immediately followed Amazon back to the office.
Stanford economist Nick Bloom, who helps run WFH Research, noted on LinkedIn that one reason could be that the “reputational and stock-price damage to Amazon has made other firms wary.” Amazon’s stock is down about 3% in the last month.
As Sherwood’s Jack Raines noted at the time, asking people to come back into the office five days a week appeared to be a cover for cutting head count. But it seems like layoffs by any other name are still perceived as layoffs.
The layoffs, at least, might be working.
To wit, an anonymous Blind survey of 2,585 Amazon workers after the announcement found that 91% were dissatisfied with the decision, and nearly three-quarters said they were looking for other employment because of the RTO mandate. Roughly a third of poll respondents said they knew someone who has already quit because of it.
“All else being equal, the average employee will choose to go to a company that offers more flexibility,” Rob Sadow, CEO and cofounder of Flex Index, told Sherwood last month. “So Amazon may have to pay more vs. a competitor for the same talent, and will be confined in their hiring to people who live within a reasonable geographic radius of their offices.”
