In an internal statement, the giant Amazon asked its employees to return to the office every day. An outdated position that is likely to reduce employee engagement and productivity according to work expert Sir Cary Cooper.
Is it a good idea to force a return to 100% face-to-face as Amazon’s CEO wants?
In a memo to its employees, Amazon’s management has suddenly changed gear. The flexibility inherited from Covid is well and truly over. Starting January 2, employees in the group’s administrative departments are being asked to return to work in the office five days a week. In his internal memo, the leader, Andy Jassy, states that the “benefits of being together in the office are considerable.”
Clearly, not everyone agrees. Asked by the Guardian, Manchester University professor Sir Cary Cooper describes employers who force their employees to return to the office five days a week as “the dinosaurs of our time”. This is a difficult view to get around, given his fame for being the first to coin the term presenteeism (to describe employees who are present at the office even though they have health problems).
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The return of presenteeism and micromanagement
Sir Cary Cooper sees this forced return as a return to the old “command and control” style of management. Such a policy risks scaring away talent, while he says it has been proven that flexible working leads to “greater job satisfaction and better staff retention”.
This return to a form of micro-management carries risks according to the professor. “If you micro-manage, you will not obtain productivity gains, you will not attract the new generation.”
No improvement in financial performance
The lack of productivity gains seems to be corroborated by other researchers. A study by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, Yuye Dingh and Mark Mai points out the absence of significant change in the financial performance of companies that force their employees to return to the office. But it does identify a very clear decline in employee satisfaction.
Amazon’s new policy – which does not apply to warehouse or delivery staff – will come into effect on January 2. This is to accommodate employees for whom this new policy “will require some organizational adjustments”. This lack of flexibility for jobs that can be done remotely is seen by some as an incentive to resign.
