Inside the chaos of Amazon's RTO mandate

30% of staff likely to leave to create a younger, whiter, more male organisation

The subject line was ‘Strengthening our Culture and Teams’, an email sent first thing Monday morning Seattle time by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. All employees around the world received it, in Europe it landed at the end of the day as many were logging off for their evening meal.

The email came in standard shit sandwich format, opening with celebration, ‘I like the direction in which we’re heading and appreciate the hard work and ingenuity of our teams globally’.

Then came the dark subject matter. Yes, the company would be lowering the amount of managers by 15%. And then:

'To address the issue of being better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business, we’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID… If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits [of being in the office]’.

Everyone would be allocated a desk in the new working so the current scramble to find a place would end. To enable employees to get their lives in order these changes wouldn’t happen until January 2025.

I heard of the news when a number of Amazon employees who read the newsletter got in touch with me. Most of them were running mental calculations of how they could reorder their lives in a few months.

Generally what happens when these sort of reforms are proposed is that we often lose sight of our privilege. Frequently those who say ‘well we used to be in five days a week, I don’t see the issue’ are those (mainly men based on the data) without care responsibilities.

10% of the workforce care for a parent, a larger number have parental responsibilities for children and there are millions of people who need to think about their pets. Thinking about a dog’s welfare might seem trivial to you, but if you have a dog left alone for 14 hours a day five days a week then it doesn’t feel as throwaway. If your own instinct is to dismiss these things you might spend a moment thinking of the fortunate position that allows you to believe such things.

Last year I highlighted what Shonda Rhimes, the Charles Dickens of serialised television said about balancing the demands of her own life:

'Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life’.

This is how many of us feel about our own lives, flexible working seemed to give us permission to fail less. We could feel proud that we got everything done at work to a high standard, and also be present for our domestic responsibilities.

The surprised response of Amazon employees was vocal. ‘The only thing I like about Amazon culture is that approx 98% of people who work there hate it,’ one person told me - a view that speaks to the disconnection of lower ranking workers from senior leaders. Senior leaders at the firm have always impressed me, having a clear sense of what Amazon’s culture (and decision making framework) is. But that doesn’t seem to have the same impact internally. ‘Let’s just say most of us are out there looking for a job from tomorrow,’ a middle manager told me.

Many Amazonians (I know) took to social media to express their upset. It was widely felt that the RTO mandate was, like similar initiatives at X and Disney, a ‘soft layoff’ - getting workers to leave without severance. The biggest flaw in a soft layoff is that presence in the office is interpreted as commitment. X’s owner, Elon Musk, went as far as to say those who were in the office for 5 days a week were demonstrating that they were ‘hardcore’. One Amazon engineer posted on LinkedIn that he was now looking for work: ‘Amazon has announced 5 day RTO, which is unfortunate because I’m interested in working for a living, not live-action role playing and virtue signaling.’

It’s true that employers have the right to determine their rules of employment. It’s worth saying that in the UK there is a right to request flexibility from day 1 of employment and this week the government has signalled these rights are going to be strengthened. Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said that employers ‘need to judge people on outcomes and not a culture of presenteeism’ - a view that seems to put Amazon on collision course with local legislation. Recent research from McKinsey has justified the case for hybrid working, suggesting it leads to 10% faster growth than single location working.

Professor Nick Bloom estimates that 30% of Amazon staff will quit over the changes. Generally hybrid working is seen to be worth the equivalent of an 8% pay increase, so this will be seen as a pay cut by the firm. What we do know that is that top talent is often the first layer of employees to leave in situations like this, they receive the most offers from competitors and are used to be able to pick and choose the benefits they seek. Overall Bloom says that if this works the new Amazon will skew younger and more male with ‘less diversity and disability’.

There has been speculation that this will lead to a wider RTO mandate, as Amazon becomes the biggest employer to take this step. Most signals suggest that is unlikely, but a number of firms have told me that their senior leaders are watching what happens next. It is more likely that firms bring more discipline to their structured hybrid insisting that workers go into the office on the same days as each other. 93% of workers prefer flexible working if given a choice and that support is likely to tell.

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• Asda replaced chart hit instore radio with AI generated tracks - staff have said it’s ‘mentally draining’

• If you’re a reader of popular psychology you may have come across Francesca Gino, a Harvard professor who was heavily featured by the likes of Adam Grant for her work about dishonesty. She published one paper which found that asking insurance claimants to sign at the top of the form (before they filled in details) reduced the extravagance of their claim. Last year a group of ‘forensic data scientists’ published eye-popping details of how her data had been manipulated to produce results. Her defamation case against the scientists was dismissed this week and she appears to have lost her job at Harvard.

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Horror upon horror. Hand me a black one:

Thanks to James Whatley and Matt Muir for the original tweet).

Two good listens from other podcasts this week - both related to the field of sports psychology.

Firstly an episode of Australian podcast All In the Mind about why athletes choke in the moment. It provides a compelling model of coping with stress - how psychologists can help us deconstruct what is happening to us in anxious moments to recognise that what is happening to us. And how this can be channelled in an effective way.

Secondly an episode of TED Radio Hour that starts on sport and talks about how unfocusing the prefrontal neocortex is the way that elite athletes can avoid flubbing high pressure moments.

There’s a brand new Eat Sleep Work Repeat next week. Thanks for the response to last week’s episode.