Is Amazon’s Return-to-Office Bellwether for WFH’s Future?

Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a memo to employees outlining several cultural and operational changes including mandating a full return to the office at the start of 2025.[i]

Jassy outlined the reasoning for this in the memo with this thought, “When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant.”

Work-From-Home vs Return-To-Office

For many future years we will read reports and say, “The pandemic caused that” and at top of the list is the work-from-home (WFH) phenomena that today has led to an increased level of tension between employees who have embraced it and employers, like Amazon, who are over it and are mandating return-to-office (RTO).

From the employee side, WFH represents options…for when and how to work, for easier child and elder care, and even for which state to live in. For employers, the combination of WFH + RTO has led to higher turnover, more positions to fill and tougher recruiting, and lower productivity.

Reporting tells us this:

• 42% of companies that have mandated RTO saw a higher level of employee turnover than they had anticipated.
• Almost one-third of companies found recruiting got worse.
• And 76% of employees said they would leave if their company forced them to RTO.
• As a final kick, nearly half of candidates said they would reject roles if there is no flexibility.[ii]

From the start, forced WFH looked like trouble for employers who had zero choice but to permit it during those pandemic months. One of few expected upsides was that money would be saved via reduced office space, assuming workers would remain at home. And while true for some companies, those non-renewed leases are having a massive negative economic impact on our cities which has yet to fully hit home.

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Further Reading: What 60 MINUTES Got Wrong About WFH Commercial Real Estate Crisis

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WFH Hasn’t Improved Employee Engagement

Turnover is up and Gallup tells us employee engagement is down for the first time in a decade, saying this specifically about WFH:

The largest decline in employee engagement was among those in remote-ready jobs who are currently working fully on-site — this group saw a decline of five points in engagement and an increase of seven points in active disengagement. It’s worth noting that exclusively remote employees saw an increase of four points in “quiet quitting” (aka not engaged in their work and workplace).[iii]

Prediction is CEOs Will End WFH

Amazon may be on the forefront of this mandate, but media reports have been clear that we should expect more of this to come. Fortune published a recent report predicting CEOs are running out of patience with WFH, citing the following reasons[iv]:

#1: Remote work is bad for new hires and junior employees.

#2: Workers admit that remote work (sometimes) causes more problems than in-person work.

#3: Remote workers put in 3.5 hours less per week compared to in-person workers.

#4: Productivity plummets on days when everyone is working remotely.

I remember two Wall Street Journal articles that nailed the problem. In one a CEO said he could not imagine a recent college grad developing adequately via zoom meetings versus walking the halls with her in-office, more-experienced colleagues. And the other article profiled four employees who had been hired and then quit within six months because zooming alone didn’t help them build relationships with their managers nor their peers.

Do Employees Have Power Regarding WFH or RTO Decisions?

The major obstacle is workers now have the upper hand. That the sheer number of workers across the U.S. cannot meet the demand for filling open jobs, permitting employees to make decisions that severely impact organizations rather than the traditional other-way-around. And the Census Bureau tells us this won’t change anytime soon because our baby boomers are retiring and there just aren’t enough younger workers to take their places.[v]

The Census Bureau also tells us in the same report that 51% of all new workforce entrants will be immigrants beginning in 2030, and that percentage will increase throughout the foreseeable future. This comes at a time when Americans’ favorable opinion of immigrants continues to go down[vi], likely influenced by the continuous streaming of Mexican border stories across TV news as though these are the only immigration examples.

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Further Reading: How Much Are Worker Shortages Impacting Customer Service Today?

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Regardless of WFH or RTO, Employee Retention Must be Addressed

CEOs are ultimately deciding their organization’s WFH/RTO strategies, choosing from (1) total WFO, (2) total RTO, or (3) various forms of hybrid scheduling. But among the hundreds of online reports about companies’ decisions, little is said about how those organizations should engage employees in order to retain them. Generic recommendations call for managers to build stronger, more personal relationships with their individual team members, yet those same generic recommendations come up short on how to do this.

Stay Interviews are Key to Employee Retention

As our company has proven for a decade-plus, Stay Interviews provide managers with a structured method to learn their employees’ greatest day-to-day needs and then meet those needs. This specific WFH retention solution is to combine the five Stay Interview questions with skill-building for asking those questions, listening to each employee’s responses, probing to learn more, taking a full page or two of notes, and then building individualized stay plans to retain that employee longer.

The Stay Interview goal is to identify and address work-driven issues versus virtual happy hours and other social activities which fail due to their simplicity, their superficial quality. While helping employees meet their peers virtually is a worthy objective, the absolute most important relationship is the one they develop with their manager…and that manager must have training and tools to lead that relationship.

Improving retention and engagement among WFH employees is a very, very tall task. Training managers to facilitate Stay Interviews on a regular schedule provides the absolute best opportunity to retain and engage them.

Need help establishing retention goals for WFH, RTO, or Hybrid?  
Schedule a conversation with me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com and we’ll discuss the numbers and needs you should have to evaluate your retention goals. We work with companies in every type of industry to cut turnover by 20% and more by building trust and accountabilities.

[i] https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/16/amazon-mandates-full-five-day-return-to-office/

[ii] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/we-re-now-finding-out-the-damaging-results-of-the-mandated-return-to-the-office-and-it-s-worse-than-we-thought/ar-AA1eDefg?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=1c82f1dc40644b398135a3d0e5745381&ei=16

[iii] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/468233/employee-engagement-needs-rebound-2023.aspx?thank-you-subscription-form=1

[iv] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/bosses-are-fed-up-with-remote-work-for-4-main-reasons-some-of-them-are-undeniable/ar-AA1cyh0l?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=6ab063aa84fa4eb5abcae434f66ef879&ei=18

[v] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1144.html

[vi] https://news.gallup.com/poll/508520/americans-value-immigration-concerns.aspx