On Monday, Amazon said that it would allow several corporate and tech workers to continue working with the firm remotely indefinitely, on condition that they can go back to the office when necessary. The company announced the latest policy in a blog post and is changing from the previous expectation of Amazon that most workers would need to work in person in the office minimum of three days in one week when offices reopen from the coronavirus pandemic in January.
BREAKING: @amazon will allow workers to continue working remotely INDEFINITELY 🚨
Executive directors will now have the discretion to allow individuals to stay remote if they want 🙌
I hope this new policy offers its employees the flexibility to work in a way that suits them 🙏 pic.twitter.com/5dVARedNHI
— Tony Jamous (@jamingo) October 12, 2021
Moreover, the Seattle Times reported that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy signed the company’s Monday announcement and said company directors would have the pleasure to allow employees that they manage to continue working remotely. Jassy wrote that they expect that there will be teams that continue remote working from home, others that will work some combination of in-house and remotely, and still others that will decide customers of the company are best attended having the teamwork mainly in the office.
Will the absence of Amazon workers affect businesses?
On the other hand, most of the online retailer Amazon’s over one million global workers can’t work remotely because they perform their responsibilities in the transportation division and fulfillment of the company, taking orders and delivering them to customers. But around fifty-thousand office and tech staff members work at the expansive headquarters of the company at the downtown Seattle campus and in the South Lake Union of the city.
Source: Web
The absence of these employees will hurt nearby restaurants, hotels, coffee shops, and other businesses such as gyms, hair salons, etc. Furthermore, the recent update of Amazon to its return-to-work policy followed similar initiatives from other big tech giants. For example, last month, Amazon announced that it decided to postpone reopening its offices indefinitely.