America's corporate giants have been grappling with the task of getting employees back into the office, but Amazon is taking a bold step. The retail behemoth is now allowing supervisors to terminate workers who resist its return-to-office directive.
In new guidelines for managers, seen by Insider, the tech giant granted leaders more freedom to take disciplinary action against staffers who fail to turn up in person at least three days a week.
The updated guidance was reportedly shared with Amazon managers via an internal system earlier this week.
According to Insider, the updates instructed managers to have a private conversation with any employees who don’t meet the minimum in-office requirements. These discussions should be documented in a follow-up email, the guidance said.
Managers were told that if employees continued to ignore the in-office rules after these preliminary meetings, they should schedule another meeting with the staffer where they could take disciplinary action including letting them go.
“If the employee does not demonstrate immediate and sustained attendance after the first conversation, managers should then conduct a follow-up discussion within a reasonable time frame (depending on the employee situation, ~1-2 weeks),” the guidelines reportedly said.
“This conversation will 1) reinforce that return to office 3+ days a week is a requirement of their job, and 2) explain that continued non-compliance without a legitimate reason may lead to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of your employment.”
A spokesperson for Amazon did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Clamping down on RTO mandate
Amazon has long made it clear that it expects staff to be in the office for at least three days a week.
Back in February, the company told its workforce they would be expected to be in the office for the majority of the week from May this year.
“Collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective when we’re in person,” CEO Andy Jassy wrote in an internal memo at the time. “The energy and riffing on one another’s ideas happen more freely.”
However, Amazon’s return to office push hasn’t exactly been smooth.
The return-to-office mandate was met with pushback from employees, with more than 28,000 Amazon workers joining an internal Slack channel called “Remote Advocacy.” Thousands of employees also signed a petition and staged a walkout to protest against the return to office push.
Despite a swathe of employees opposing Amazon’s RTO rules, the company and its leadership have not backed down from the mandate.
“We’re always listening and will continue to do so, but we’re happy with how the first month of having more people back in the office has been,” Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser told Fortune in June. “We understand that it’s going to take time to adjust back to being in the office more.”
Meanwhile, Jassy himself suggested in August that the prospects of employees who refused to comply with the rules were dim.
“If you can’t disagree and commit, it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon,” he said.
