Amazon recently tightened its policy for employees to return to the office, requiring them to be there five days a week. Employees complain that they still spend a lot of time on video meetings, and they also advise their colleagues who return to the office from home to take more showers.
Amazon recently tightened its policy for employees to return to the office, requiring them to be there five days a week. Employees complain that they still spend a lot of time on video meetings, and they also advise their colleagues who return to the office from home to take more showers.
«Please go back to RTO3 (3 days in office per week). Or allow employees to work from home if they are in the right mindset and performing their duties well,» an Amazon employee told Business Insider.
Amazon has 1.5 million employees, of which about 350,000 are corporate staff, so those who openly complain about their entire RTO experience represent a small portion of the company’s workforce.
Some of these complaints may be a natural reaction to the drastic change in daily life for thousands of workers who were slowly accustomed to working from home during the pandemic and now must readjust to the new reality.
Not all Amazon employees are unhappy with working in the office every day of the week. The company’s press service shared the thoughts of two employees who like the policy.
According to Rena Palumbo, an employee at Amazon Web Services, restoring the human connection with colleagues was important, and she now enjoys working with them more.
Cash Ashley, of AWS, noted that in-person interactions were crucial for building working relationships and creating mentoring opportunities. «You just can’t recreate those connections online,» Ashley said.
An Amazon spokesperson also noted that the company is focused on making the transition «as smooth as possible.» However, employees complain that this does not always work out.
Most Amazon corporate employees began adhering to a five-day return-to-work deadline earlier this month, and there are some signs that the company wasn’t fully prepared for the logistical challenges.
Some workers found that there were not enough desks and had to find space in the cafeteria or hallway. Others said that there were not enough chairs in offices and meeting rooms.
There was also a shortage of meeting rooms, one employee said. Some people were used to talking openly about private matters while working from home. Now they are surrounded by colleagues in the office, so they slip informally into meeting rooms and phone rooms to have these conversations. This has cluttered meeting spaces and forced some managers to have private conversations in open areas where everyone in the office can hear them.
Additionally, some employees have begun complaining about office theft. One person reported that a keyboard and mouse that were on her desk had disappeared, while another urged employees to keep their belongings in a safe place.
«Despite being well-paid adults, it’s shameful that we can’t trust each other to leave personal belongings unattended,» one employee wrote on Slack.
On Blind, a website that runs anonymous message boards for corporate employees, Amazon employees even posted an «essential survival guide» with advice for colleagues returning to the office.
«Practice personal hygiene protocols BEFORE you leave your launch pad (home). Yes, that means you should take that shower you’ve been avoiding since you started working from home,» reads one tip for office life at Amazon.
Another piece of advice urges colleagues to keep restrooms clean and reminds them to flush after themselves. Another reminder concerns the type of footwear to wear in the office. «Shoes are not optional. This is not a throwback to the beach sprint — keep your toes in their proper (shoe) containers,» wrote an anonymous Amazon employee.
Earlier, unions at Ubisoft’s game studios in Barcelona filed a lawsuit against the company over changes to its remote work policy. They want Ubisoft to withdraw the requirement to work in the office at least 3 days a week.
Let us remind you that Andriy Beschuk, data analytics and automation auditor at Kyivstar, conducted a study based on his own experience and proved to the hilt why he considers office work a waste of time. And IT professionals came to the comments with their arguments «for» and «against» office work.
