Amazon lays out why workers should go back to the office.

Global shopping giant Amazon US is leading tech companies in cracking down on working from home by tracking and penalising those who do not spend enough time in the office.

The UK arm of the company is not following suit, a spokesman confirmed to a question from the Matt Haycox Daily.

Tech companies trying to get their workers back in the office

Amazon US sent  emails to workers who fail to do their time in the office saying they were: “not currently meeting our expectation of joining your colleagues in the office at least three days a week.” 

Amazon US asked its workers to go back to the office in February. Disney and Zoom are among other tech companies trying to get their workers back to the office.

“This was very much a US only thing.”

We asked Amazon UK , which employs 75,000 people, whether the operations here were going to follow the policy of the US parent company. 

“Nothing for the UK. This was very much a US only thing,” the Amazon spokesperson said.

Back to the office likely be a growing issue.

More than two years on from the COVID pandemic there is an army of people in the UK working from home. It is likely to be a growing issue as the years wear on and the pandemic fades into memory.

The National Statistics Office says from September to January 2023, 44% per cent of workers in the UK were either working from home or hybrid.

That is more than 16 million people – about three times the population of Norway.

Just for the chattering middle classes? 

“Workers in the highest income band, those who were educated to degree level or above, and those in professional occupations were most likely to report home only or hybrid working,” says the NSO.

One of the biggest criticisms of home working is that it is for the chattering middle classes, who have their own expensive laptops and fast internet connection.  

There was no such quarter for Factory workers and manual labourers; who were probably at greater risk of contracting COVID. When the lockdown ended – they were all back on the shop floor. 

“People tend to be more engaged, observant.”

There are also concerns about the performance of those workers allowed to linger at home.

Amazon US sent us a list of concerns from its CEO Andy Jassy.

“ When you’re in-person, people tend to be more engaged, observant, and attuned to what’s happening in the meetings and the cultural clues being communicated. For those unsure about why something happened or somebody reacted a certain way, it’s easier to ask ad-hoc questions on the way to lunch, in the elevator, or in the hallway; whereas when you’re at home, you’re less likely to do so,” says Jassy.  

“Collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective when we’re in person. The energy and riffing on one another’s ideas happen more freely. In the more productive brainstorming sessions, I’ve been a part of over the years, people get excited and blurt out new ideas or improvements to prior proposals, quickly advancing the seed of an idea, and leading to the broader group getting energized and feeling that it’s onto something. This rapid interjecting happens more often in person because people feel less inhibited about jumping in or even interrupting sometimes. This interjecting happens less frequently in virtual calls because it blocks out all speakers when it transpires. Also, teams working on new ideas often find that a whiteboard enhances the group’s understanding and iteration. And, a lesser-known fact is that some of the best inventions have had their breakthrough moments from people staying behind in a meeting and working through ideas on a whiteboard, or walking back to an office together on the way back from the meeting, or just popping by a teammate’s office.”

“Workers working from home perform worse. ” 

In 2020, the Harvard Business Review carried out a survey of 215 supervisors and managers, in the US, about the issue of working from home.

Thirty-eight per cent of managers agreed that a worker’s performance was worse than those working in the office. 

Forty-one per cent of managers agreed that they were sceptical about remote workers staying motivated.   

Long, lonely days in the office at risk of COVID.

My experience of managing home workers came in the eye of the COVID pandemic of 2020.

I worked every single day of the lockdown, at my TV station where I was the head of news, despite the huge risk to my life.

I kept the station running for months, on a skeleton staff, as well as reading all of the news bulletins. 

I did it for two reasons. Firstly, I am a professional and this was the worthwhile job I signed up for 40 years ago and risked my life for many times before; secondly, I believed telling the news during the pandemic was more important than ever.     

From professionals to backsliders.

Managing staff remotely? I found that professional, hard-working,  people produced work from home, as well as they did from the office – in some cases better. I also found that backsliders in the office sometimes took the opportunity to slide even further when working from home. 

This was the general feeling of entrepreneur Simon Lancaster, of SJL Insurance Services, who employs 86  people at the Kay’s building in the Tything in the heart of the city of Worcester in the Midlands. 

“Worked well in some cases, not so well in others.”

“We had 100% of staff in the office pre Covid then had 100% staff working from home during Covid, which worked well in some cases, but not so well in others,” he says.

”So like most companies now we have found a balance where some are office based and some working from home, and some split it a couple of days each. It has had its teething problems with many pros and cons both ways but things have settled into it now and the balance works quite well.” 

The battle to get people back to work has only just begun. A lot of companies will be watching Amazon US to see how it can be done.