Amazon’s return-to-office (RTO) directive has not gone down well with the employees. An online survey of more than 2,500 Amazon employees by Blind reveals that 91 per cent of them are not happy about the RTO policy.
A mere handful of them (only nine per cent) seem to approve of the five-day in-office policy. In fact, three in four employees would rather quit the company than return to work five days a week. A good 73 per cent are already looking for alternatives and preparing to move on.
Employees who were hired remote find the policy absolutely unacceptable because they took the job for it very remote nature. They naturally cannot expect their families to relocate. Also, even if these remote employees do decide to relocate, with the economic environment being so uncertain, there is no way to be sure how long they would have before being laid off.
About 32 per cent of the employees said they were aware of someone who had decided to quit the job just because of the RTO mandate, and a whopping 80 per cent said they were aware of people contemplating quitting!
Some employees have admitted that RTO mandates are like impositions that are capable of affecting their lifestyle and lowering their quality of life so much so that they have decided not to become a parent.
While attrition may end up becoming a huge negative outcome of the mandate, hiring is also expected to be affected. Since the policy was announced, the company is not drawing as many job seekers as it used to. It has probably even led to once interested candidates thinking the RTO edit is the company’s strategy to weed out unwanted employees.