Amazon relies on 'backdoor layoffs': Return to the office as a strategy?

Amazon is engaging public interest with its new office presence policy, which stipulates that employees will work in the office five days a week starting in 2025. This announcement has upset many employees and prompted some to apply for new jobs—possibly exactly the reaction Amazon intended. Some experts in the future of work speculate that the tech giant is using this strict policy as a covert method to reduce staff without issuing formal layoffs. However, this strategy might come at the expense of the company's talent and technological progress. Economist Nicholas Bloom from Stanford University notes that Amazon may intend to control costs through staff reduction and is willing to accept the associated loss of innovative capacity. The implementation of this return-to-office aligns with CEO Andy Jassy’s plans to reduce the number of managers and increase the employee-to-leader ratio by 15 percent. Despite these measures, Amazon emphasizes that there is no intention to reduce the overall number of employees. Nevertheless, industry experts like Brian Elliott predict that the directive RTO policy (Return to Office) could lead to increased resignation readiness. This is because many employees prefer a hybrid model, with fewer but significant presence days in the office. Recent studies support these assumptions. A study by the personnel consultancy Robert Half found that 39 percent of office workers in Australia would resign if their flexible working options were restricted. Amazon employees also reinforce this tendency: On the anonymous review platform Blind, 73 percent of surveyed Amazon employees stated they were considering a job change due to the back-to-office mandate. Such 'backdoor resignations,' as Bloom calls them, are not uncommon. According to a May survey by BambooHR, about a quarter of the executives surveyed hope that employees will voluntarily leave if an office presence requirement is introduced. A similar example is AT&T: The enforced return of 60,000 employees at nine locations led, according to CEO John Stankey, to 9,000 employees facing the choice of either relocating or leaving the company.