Amazon orders corporate employees to return to office 5 days a week

Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told corporate staffers in a memo on Monday that they needed to return to the office five days a week by Jan. 2.

Workers in Amazon's corporate office have enjoyed limited time at the office while working from home since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, most staffers work in Amazon's corporate office three days a week.

"When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant," Jassy said in the statement .

"We've observed that it's easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice and strengthen our culture, collaborating, brainstorming and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and teams tend to be better connected to one another."

In another move, Amazon said it plans to have fewer managers so it can "remove layers and flatten organizations." Jassy said he wanted to increase the ratio of individual workers to manage by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025.

"If we do this work well, it will increase our teammates' ability to move fast, clarify and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers (and the business), decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organizations' ability to make customers' lives better easier every day," Jassy said.

Amazon announced two major job cuts earlier this year. In April , it confirmed cutting hundreds of cloud computing jobs in its physical stores and technology and sales positions within the cloud division.

In January , Amazon laid off "several hundred employees" in Prime Video and MGM Studios.