Last week, after the memo from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy about laying off a layer of managers and announcing a full-time office return hit the news, chief people officers across the country knew what was coming next: a note from their CEO.
If your CEO’s response was, “It’s recruiting season—let’s go get some talented people!” then life is good. That’s an appropriate response, and works for most organizations. Across industries, two-thirds of all firms—and almost three-fourths of companies with more than 25,000 employees—either have a hybrid work program or let employees choose where they work. Given that flexibility is second only to compensation for most office workers, Amazon’s shift has increased the likelihood that its employees are looking elsewhere. In a recent Robert Half survey, 31% of job searchers cited the desire for greater flexibility as a top motivator.
But some CPOs got a different note, one that read something like: “The board and I have been saying this for a while. We need to get people back in the office. It’s what works best.”
Let’s talk briefly about what’s behind this, and some research-based points CPOs can use to build their rebuttal.
The return of the “hardcore” approach in tech.
Amazon’s shift isn’t a shock to a lot of executives who are familiar with life inside the company, which isn’t known for being an easy place to work. When Jassy talks about Amazon’s culture in his memo, it’s clear his mind isn’t on belonging and growth; instead, he’s thinking about whether employees understand how hard they are expected to work.
While large tech firms have been more flexible than their similarly-sized peers in the post-pandemic era—only 4% of large tech firms had full- time in-office policies last quarter, versus 26% of large firms outside of tech—many are now newly adamant about shifting back to the office, most shifting from employee choice to a structured hybrid program. (We’ve already seen some big tech firms like Salesforce double down this fall on reinforcing existing policies this fall.)
Another driver: employers’ desire to increase voluntary attrition.Many large technology firms, investing incredible amounts of money on AI, are now looking for ways to cut costs to compensate. Sometimes, that means layoffs. Other times, it might mean tightening the screws further in the hopes of driving workers out. Return-to-office mandates are proven to increase turnover, which means that many organizations may be preparing to crank up the RTO engine. In fact, nearly one in four c-level executives shared in a recent Bamboo survey that they hoped their organization’s office return would lead to some additional turnover.
What’s your response?
For most CPOs, especially in tech companies, this isn’t a new conversation. Far from it—most have now had more than four years of discussing and debating the finer points of remote and hybrid work, punctuated every six months or so by another round of saber-rattling among activist investors, Wall Street types, and CEOs.
I’ve spent the past week talking to senior people leaders about how best to rebut a CEO who’s declared themselves to be in favor of Amazon’s mandate. Here are some of the talking points that emerged from those conversations:
Amazon’s culture isn’t our culture. The focus of Jassy’s memo is almost entirely on how an office return will improve company culture, but numerous studies suggest that it will have the opposite effect. Recent Gallup research found that employee engagement was lowest for fully on-site employees, bolstering other findings that forced marches back into the office destroy engagement, while a PwC report concluded that hybrid workers “feel more included and productive than those who sit at their company’s desk five days a week.” As one Amazon employee put it on Reddit, they plan to “soft quit and get a new job”—a mindset likely shared by many colleagues.
Besides, Amazon’s culture has always been unique, and always hardcore—intense pressure, long hours. The company has plenty of practices—like using a six-page memo as the standard document for sharing ideas—that no other organization has emulated at scale. Why would we assume that borrowing pieces of another company’s culture is an effective way to strengthen our own?
A mandate is a good way to lose our top talent. When an RTO mandate comes down from on high, the people most likely to leave are longer-tenured employees and high performers. These workers are extraordinarily expensive and hard to replace, and even 5% of them leaving slows down our most important work. On top of all that, mandates disproportionately impact women, who are more likely to leave in their aftermath—some 63% of executives in a recent Upwork survey said their mandates led to a disproportionate exodus of women.
Let’s focus on performance instead. It’s important to note that Jassy doesn’t even mention productivity, which is appropriate: There are at least 94 studies out there showing that monitoring people fails to improve performance and instead increases stress and distrust. Research has shown that hybrid work has no negative effects on performance, and it doesn’t impede innovation. If we’re going to make a big change, let’s make it an investment in outcomes-driven management, and a commitment to aligning on goals we can track and measure throughout the organization.
If none of that works, you might go back to my favorite simple question: What problem are we trying to solve? If there’s a business performance issue, let’s figure out what’s driving that issue and set about fixing it. But that fix isn’t going to be an RTO mandate.