Some Amazon workers won't be returning to the office five days a week in January because the office isn't ready for them, Business Insider reports.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced in September that Amazon workers would be required to return to the office five days a week, up from the current three, starting Jan. 2. The update will affect its roughly 350,000 corporate employees.
But staffers in Atlanta, Houston, Nashville and New York were recently notified by the tech company's real estate team that their full-time RTO policy will not be in effect until their workspaces are ready, which could be as late as May, according to documents reviewed by Business Insider.
Amazon did not answer questions from CNBC Make It and provided a statement that office buildings will be ready for a majority of workers by Jan. 2. Some locations may have different timelines, and the company is communicating directly with employees in those locations.
The tech giant has two headquarters: one in Seattle, and one in Arlington, Va.
The company previously indicated that all employees should be ready to report to the office full-time by January, whether or not their dedicated space was ready.
Amazon encountered a similar issue in 2023 when it began requiring workers to badge in three times a week. Though workers were expected to make their return by May, memos to workers in New York, Austin and elsewhere showed their spaces wouldn't be ready until the summer, in some cases as late as September, Business Insider previously reported.
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The updated requirements for 2025 sparked discussions of whether the move would lead to a quitting spree or spur other businesses to up their own RTO requirements to five days a week. Amazon's cloud boss Matt Garman said unhappy workers could leave the company, while Jassy denied that the five-day mandate was issued as a "backdoor layoff."
Jassy reported seeing teamwide improvements as a result of the company's hybrid return in his memo announcing the new five-day requirement: "We've observed that it's easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another," he wrote.
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"If anything," he continued, "the last 15 months we've been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits."
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