Amazon will allow its employees to continue working remotely indefinitely, as long as they can come to the office when needed. The new policy was announced in a blog post and represents a change of pace from the previously announced practice whereby most employees would have had to show up at the office at least three days a week when offices reopened.
The Seattle Times reported that a signed message was sent to employees by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
“We expect there will be teams that will continue to work primarily remotely, others that will work in a combination of remote and in the office, and still others that will decide” to always work in the office, wrote Jassy. Most of the online retail giant’s more than one million global employees cannot work smartly because they perform their duties in logistics, sorting or delivering orders to customers. But some 50,000 technical and office employees work on the company’s sprawling downtown Seattle campus and in the city’s South Lake Union neighborhood. Their absence will damage nearby restaurants and other businesses. Amazon’s update to its return to work policy has followed similar moves by other big tech companies. Microsoft announced last month that it had postponed the reopening of its offices indefinitely.