“As we look back over the past five years, we continue to believe that the benefits of being together in the office are significant. We see that it’s easier for our people to learn, design, train, and strengthen our culture; it’s easier and more effective to collaborate, share, and invent; it’s easier to teach and learn from each other; and teams tend to be better connected to each other.” The message sent to Amazon employees on Monday, September 16, was signed by Andy Jassy, the group’s CEO.
From January 2, 2025, the multinational’s administrative employees, or 300,000 to 350,000 employees worldwide, will have to return to the office five days a week. Like many companies, Amazon had implemented remote working at full speed during the pandemic. After a period of full remotethe group had already recalled its administrative teams on site, for three mandatory days per week, in February 2023.
A return to the office in the name of collective productivity and collaboration
An episode that echoes other decisions by American business leaders. The most publicized remains that of Elon Musk, who had imposed on all X employees a return to the office at a minimum of 40 hours per week, in November 2022: ” We are also changing Twitter’s policy so that remote work is no longer allowed unless there are specific exceptions. Managers will send me the exception lists for review and approval. “, he said in an internal email. A measure similar to those taken in the other companies he owns: Tesla and SpaceX.
During 2023 and 2024, other American giants (Apple, Disney, Salesforce, Google, Open AI, Meta, Zoom, etc.) called for office attendance, to varying degrees: from three to five days of mandatory presence per week. The arguments put forward were the same as those of Amazon’s management today: a desire to strengthen collaboration and collective productivity, to foster innovation and team creativity, and to break the isolation of employees.
A difficult obligation to accept for American employees
A hard pill to swallow for many American employees, who had become accustomed to a new work-life balance since the health crisis. Some had even chosen to move away from major cities to benefit from a better living environment. It is not surprising that the change of direction in these large groups has therefore resulted in strikes, demonstrations, but also waves of departures. And particularly among executives: according to a survey by the Gartner firm, published in May 2024, 33% of senior executives who received an order to return to the office said they would leave their current company for this reason.
Beyond employee dissatisfaction, does returning to the office have a positive impact on company performance? On the issue of productivity, studies differ. While some report an improvement in productivity of up to 13% (Nicholas Bloom, 2015), others note a drop in productivity of up to 30% (according to the work of Morikawa, in Japan, in 2021). An important nuance was provided by a July 2023 study, carried out by the OECD in 25 countries: productivity improves during the first days of teleworking, but drops beyond two days of remote work per week.
Where are we in France?
In France, some groups have also recalled their employees on site. In early November 2023, a Slack OpinionWay study conducted among 1,000 knowledge workers observed that 7 out of 10 companies imposed mandatory days of presence in the office. On the other hand, few are returning to 100% face-to-face.
Furthermore, in France, the post-Covid context is very different than in other countries where teleworking had become more anchored in the culture. Thus, according to a study by think tank British Centre for Cities, based on the observation of six global cities, French employees are those who have returned to the office the most. In Paris, people work on average 3.5 days per week in person, compared to 3.2 days in Singapore, 3.1 in New York, 2.8 in Sydney and 2.7 in Toronto and London. Paris also stands out for its extremely low rate of fully remote workers: only 5% of workers in the French capital work remotely full time, compared to 12 to 15% in other major cities and up to 25% in Toronto.
For Sarah Proust, associate expert at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, “Making office attendance mandatory may not be necessary” because “employees find it beneficial for themselves and their work to come to the office”. Rather, it encourages companies to “to take stock of the practice of teleworking over the past four years, to implement tools adapted to the company’s missions, to organize teleworking that is more collective than individual and to question managerial practices and their articulation with the company’s strategy and workspaces.”
A global back-to-office movement?
Globally, less than 10% of HR leaders anticipate a decline in remote work by the end of 2024, according to a HireRight study. Most of them see it as an essential lever for attracting new recruits, a way to expand the pool of international candidates and a guarantee of retaining their talents in often tight local labor markets.
In several studies, the hybrid model emerges as the most desirable, both for employees and companies. It remains for each person to set the cursor and define the terms according to their own work organization, management methods and culture. While the time has come for many companies to renegotiate their three-year telework agreement, employers will have to ask themselves this crucial question, submitted by Benoît Serre, Vice-President of ANDRH: “How can teleworking be an asset for my business and my activity?”
