Nirit Cohen, writing for Forbes, was the inspiration for this newsletter. In part, her article, “Why Amazon’s CEO Is Right About RTO – For All The Wrong Reasons”, echoes what I have been speaking and writing about recently and the core of my latest book “Be REMARKABLE! Learn to Unlearn: The New Leadership Mindset.”

Nirit explains why she believes Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, demands a return to the office. She suggests that the return-to-the-office (RTO) mandate should be framed as a stepping stone between “today’s realities and tomorrow’s possibilities.” Employees should see the RTO mandate as a transitional phase that keeps the organisation grounded while it evolves.

I agree with her on the real reasons behind the RTO mandate, but I do not believe her path to getting employees back into the office will work. Employees will just not buy into it.

Not buying it

I do not believe employees will buy into a plan that tells them to return to the office full-time while the path to a working model embracing flexibility and autonomy is worked out.

Nirit provides a narrative that Amazon’s CEO could use to get employees back into the office. These are extracts.

Extract 1

“The traditional, in-person work model has its flaws, but it has also been proven to drive outcomes that we’re still working out how to achieve remotely.”

Has it? Where is the evidence that working in the office drives outcomes that cannot be achieved working remotely? Jassy has not, to my knowledge, identified how remote work has failed.

Amazon generated $574 billion in revenue in 2023, making it the third-largest company in the world by revenue. That seems like a decent outcome!

Extract 2

“Over the next few years, we’ll be investing in the technologies, tools, and structures that will allow us to operate at our best, regardless of where we are.”

Why do Amazon employees have to wait years to be able to work remotely? Amazon is a tech company. The technologies, tools, and structures are available right now.

Intel has a hybrid first approach. Christy Pambianchi, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Intel, says:

“The majority of employees will split their time between working remotely and in the office. We’re not mandating a single approach regarding the number of days per week all employees should be on-site or how people should collaborate. We are empowering teams to find the balance that drives results and achieves our business goals. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for our global workforce.”

Atlassian has a Team Anywhere approach to distributed work. The Atlassian website says:

“Atlassians have flexibility in where they work – whether in an office, from home, or a combination of the two. That way, Atlassians have more control over supporting their family, personal goals, and other priorities. We can live in any of the 13 countries where we have legal entities.”

Amazon’s corporate headcount is around 400,000. Intel has 131,000 employees across 65 countries. Atlassian has over 12,000 employees across 13 countries. So, these models are scalable.

Extract 3

“This is a call to action, not just to return to the office but to help us build a new model that allows us to retain our culture, drive innovation, and achieve the results our customers and shareholders expect.”

Firstly, employees are already constructing the “new model” and leaders should be reaching out to cocreate the future.

Secondly, culture does not live in an office. Culture is a shared set of beliefs, values, experiences, and aspirations.

I wrote about this two years ago: Culture Does Not Live Here. I also provided a list of companies without a return-to-the-office mandate and the culture scores from Comparably, Glassdoor, and Indeed. The scores indicated that culture is not adversely impacted when employees work remotely.

I also used the Liverpool Football Club (LFC) example, which I will do again with updated figures. I am an avid LFC fan—a born and bred Scouser. With an estimated 500 million devoted fans worldwide, LFC claims one of the most extensive fanbases in football. Anfield, Liverpool’s home ground, has a seating capacity of 61,276.

This means that only 0. 0122552% of fans are ever together at Anfield. Yet, there is a great culture. We have the same values, sense of purpose, behaviour patterns, expectations, and assumptions. We sing the same songs!

Innovation is not driven just because you are in an office. According to McKinsey, virtual work and remote collaboration accelerate innovation, not hold it back.

“Although it may come as a surprise to some, boldly innovating through remote collaboration has been a fixture in the scientific community for decades. In the 1980s, researchers adopted a way of working called the “collaboratory,” a virtual space where scientists interact with colleagues, share data and instruments, and collaborate without regard to physical location. Breakthroughs achieved through virtual collaboration include the Human Genome Project and the ATLAS project at CERN, which involved 1,800 particle physicists across 34 countries.”

Trust

Employees will not buy into the Amazon message because of lack of trust.

In 2023, CNN reported that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees to support the company’s return-to-office plan or consider employment elsewhere.

He also predicted that those who could not accept the policy would have grim prospects of remaining at Amazon.

As the World Socialist Web Site put it:

“In an example of ruling class arrogance and brutality, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has ordered employees who have been working remotely to come back into the office or find another job in the midst of a new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

That does not set a good foundation for a collaborative approach to a new working model.

In May 2023, 2,000 Amazon employees worldwide walked off the job to highlight a “lack of trust in company leadership’s decision-making.”

The RTO mandate is a major shift from Amazon’s previous remote-friendly policies. When companies keep doing backflips and changing the narrative, there is a lack of trust, and leaders are not seen as honest and transparent.

Research by Nicholas Bloom at Stanford University has shown that employees' productivity increased by 13 % when they opted into work-from-home policies. Nine months after the initial research, the same employees were given a choice between remaining at home and returning to the office. Those who chose the former saw even further improvements: They were 22% more productive than before the experiment.  

Why wouldn’t employees question the reason behind the Amazon mandate? Is it so they can be watched? If that is true, Amazon leadership says, “We do not trust you.”

How can there be trust when Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, claims at an all-hands meeting that 9 out of 10 employees are happy with the new in-office policy, whilst a survey by Blind found that 91% are not happy?

The real reasons

Nirit nails it when she says Jassy is “grappling with how to deliver success in a fundamentally changed environment.”

“For executives like Jassy, who’ve spent years mastering this environment, their authority and expertise are often communicated through the power dynamics of an office setting. The face-to-face conversations, strategic roundtables, and day-to-day observations in the office give them confidence that operations are running smoothly, that employees are aligned, and that the culture is strong. They feel that decisions made in this environment are cohesive, accountable, and, above all, effective. It’s a structure that has reliably delivered results, promoted innovation within a controlled space, and led to their personal advancement.”

In a nutshell, he is outside his comfort zone and scrambling to get back into it. The pandemic imposed a new way of working on Jassy and his peers. They had no say in the matter and had to move to a remote working model overnight.

Now, he wants to go back to how it was pre-March 2020. That is not going to happen. Period. The genie is out of the bottle with no intention of going back in. Employees’ expectations are dramatically different to what they were pre-pandemic. They experienced flexibility and autonomy and increased work-life balance. They could arrange their professional life around their personal life rather than the other way around; they had more time with family and friends and no longer had a long and often unpleasant commute. They are not going to give all that up without a fight.

Jassy and others, rather than trying to go back in time, must learn to unlearn.

Learn to unlearn

They need to learn how to lead a distributed workforce. It was Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book “Future Shock” who said:

“The illiterate of the future are not those who can't read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

This is why leaders must learn to unlearn.

They need to:

1.     Recognise and accept that the knowledge that has worked so far is no longer relevant or has limited value. The sooner they recognise this, the sooner they can move in a new direction. They must seek feedback on their beliefs, behaviours, and modus operandi to help determine their relevancy.

 

2.     Learn to unlearn and seek the opportunity to relearn. Leaders must replace the knowledge they eliminate with new knowledge. They must be open-minded, curious, and intentional to unlearn. They must focus on the latest knowledge and break their old patterns of thought and behaviour.

3.     Remain open to new experiences and knowledge. They cannot unlearn and relearn only to close the door again. They must continually question and challenge what they know and ensure it is relevant and current. Leaders must keep learning to unlearn and relearn.

The challenge is that it is easier said than done.

As Adam Grant said, “It takes curiosity to learn. It takes courage to unlearn. Learning requires the humility to admit what you don’t know today. Unlearning requires the integrity to admit that you were wrong yesterday. Learning is how you evolve. Unlearning is how you keep up as the world evolves.”

Jassy and those like him must find the courage, humility, and integrity to unlearn and relearn to lead without the comfort of the physical office.

They should not force the workforce to return to working full-time in an office while they get their act together and figure out how to lead the distributed workforce. It’s not like they have not had time. Just because they do not have a plan now is not a reason to force the workforce back into an office while formulating one. Companies are not suffering from remote work. They are suffering due to a lack of courageous leadership.

Employees will leave for a company that meets their expectations.

My prediction

I predict that this time next year, Jassy and the likes will look in the rearview mirror, see the devastation behind them, and ask, “What happened?”

Unless, as many commentators suggest, the RTO mandate is no more than layoffs in disguise.

Many experts say that Amazon likely already knows the new policy will nudge dissatisfied workers out, meaning the company will no longer have to go through the tough process of formal layoffs.

However, the RTO mandate could cost the company its talent and tech advancements. Other tech companies could keep their flexible work models to poach Amazon's talent.

The layoff in sheep’s clothing could backfire as the strategy hasn’t always worked out for employers. Almost half of employers that implemented RTO policies saw a greater than anticipated level of employee attrition, according to a 2023 report from Unispace. Almost 30% reported recruitment difficulties. 

Amazon may struggle to retain and attract talent to remain competitive.