Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
What’s going on:
After thousands of Amazon employees voiced their opposition to the company’s return-to-office mandate by creating a Slack channel, some staff decided to create a new one in order to demonstrate their backing of the policy.
Despite this show of support, it seems that employees are still overwhelmingly in favor of the original channel that is against the RTO plan, according to Business Insider.
Why it matters:
As tensions flare among Amazon’s corporate workforce following CEO Andy Jassy’s announcement of a new, three-day-a-week RTO policy starting in May, the issue is slated to remain contentious for months to come. Thousands of disgruntled employees took to the remote advocacy Slack channel almost immediately, launching a petition to formally reject the change.
Monday saw the RTO-supporting Slack channel draw 750 people, while the opposing one brought in a whopping 28,000 members.
How it’ll impact the future:
Jassy’s internal message about the new RTO policy said “We know that it won’t be perfect at first, but the office experience will steadily improve over the coming months (and years) as our real estate and facilities teams smooth out the wrinkles, and ultimately keep evolving how we want our offices to be set up to capture the new ways we want to work.”
One individual proposed in the chatroom that the RTO policy shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach; rather, those who prefer to work in the office should strive to create a more comfortable workspace instead of merely cramming more people into a confined space who don’t want to be there.
Employers may face resistance from employees when unveiling their return-to-work policies, for remote work has become the favored method of working nowadays.
