Amazon cracking down on and speaking to RTO holdouts

“Over a year ago we asked employees to start coming into the office three or more days per week because we believe it would yield the best long-term results for our customers, business, and culture. And it has,” Amazon spokesperson Rob Munoz told Fortune in an emailed statement. 

Munoz added that since the tech giant announced its return-to-office policy in February last year most employees are “in the office more frequently.” However, it’s having words with those who are not. 

“Now that it’s been more than a year, we’re starting to speak directly with employees who haven’t regularly been spending meaningful amounts of time in the office to ensure they understand the importance of spending quality time with their colleagues,” the statement concluded.

A coffee badging crackdown? 

According to leaked Slack messages viewed by Business Insider, Amazon employees across different teams have been set a minimum-hour obligation on in-office days. Some teams have reportedly been told that a minimum of two hours per visit is required to count as office attendance, others six.

“Remember when we were measured on metrics that actually mattered?” one employee reportedly complained on Slack.

“Could I badge into this door 3 days per week and save myself from having to commute to the office?” another person reportedly wrote on Slack, in reference to a back room door which doesn’t track a persons exit.

The toughened stance comes as research shows that workers are increasingly dodging in-office mandates by scanning their badge so it looks like they came to the office, before swiftly returning home—a practice known as coffee badging. 

Amazon refused to confirm where coffee badging was an issue when asked by Fortune.

However, the recent crackdown comes after a year of tug-of-war with Amazon employees over where they work.

Last year, around 30,000 employees signed a petition protesting the company’s in-office mandate, and more than 1,800 pledged to walk out from their jobs to take a stand.

But the tech giant has since retaliated by warning workers that if they don’t start showing up, they’ll be shipped out: Amazon managers have been given the green light to block promotions and even fire employees who fail to show face three days a week in the office.

“If you can’t disagree and commit, it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned RTO-defying workers last summer. 

Companies are cracking down on RTO mandates

Amazon is not the only firm to take a tougher stance on its in-office policy: Dell and Google have both started proving they aren’t all talk when it comes to their RTO mandates by formally tracking badge swipes.

What’s more, a recent WFH Research study co-authored by workplace guru Nick Bloom found that frustrated managers are increasingly likely to take action against insubordinate remote workers. 

Nearly a quarter of managers revealed that employees face being fired for not following RTO mandates—up from 11% in 2022. Meanwhile, about 17% of respondents they’ll do “nothing” to punish non-compliant employees—down from 34% in 2022.

However, firms who issue commute or quit ultimatums to staff risk being left empty-handed if remote-loving employees call their bluff.

As a result of its aggressive RTO order, the dating platform Grindr lost almost half of its workforce in two weeks, including most of its engineering team, causing the company to reckon with technical issues.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s (now X) operations were once put at risk when more workers than expected chose the latter option in Elon Musk’s call to go “hardcore” or quit.