Amazon is ramping up its fight against remote workers after it reportedly began threatening employees who fail to work from the office frequently enough.
According to an email seen by TechRadar Pro, some Amazon staff members in the US were told that they were “not currently meeting our expectation of joining your colleagues in the office at least three days a week.”
Amazon has been one of the more vocal companies in terms of its stance on hybrid working, at least publicly, and its workers have been just as vocal.
Amazon vs remote working
The ecommerce and cloud giant said that the email was sent to workers who “badged in fewer than three days a week for five or more of the past eight weeks [or] have not badged in three days a week for three or more of the past four weeks,” however Amazon also reportedly said that “there may be instances where we have it wrong” after complaints from workers saying they should not have received the email surfaced.
It is believed that employee attendance is monitored through badge tap-ins. Google has also employed a similar approach.
Recently, some Amazon workers staged a walkout in protest over the company’s return-to-office mandate, as well as accused failings over climate goals. When we asked Amazon to comment on this, we were told that fewer employees actually turned up than had initially signed up, however it’s clear that a sentiment of dissatisfaction is plaguing Amazon employees worldwide.
Google’s workers have also been up in arms over their own hybrid working situation, which for some in the Google Cloud division, has resulted in a desk-sharing setup.
An Amazon spokesperson told TechRadar Pro in an email that this is a US-only policy, and shared a company response to workers who received the message in error which suggests that they should contact their manager, who can get guidance from the firm’s HR department.
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