Amazon managers should not need face time for supervision

The company should reconsider its effort to force office attendance

- SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL

Amazon.com Inc has gotten serious about its return-to-office policy, according to Business Insider, encouraging managers to confront and even fire employees who don’t come in at least three days every week.

This puts middle managers at Amazon, long known for its “churn and burn" approach to managing its workforce, in an impossible position. Sack people who aren’t coming in—but who might be doing a very good job from home and could be difficult to replace—or risk their own futures if they do not boost attendance rates. Amazon is making a mistake with this approach. If there’s anything the last three years have shown us, it’s that we need not have eyes on each other to do good work. Although attendance at US offices hasn’t meaningfully increased over the past year, tension has, with a recent Gartner survey finding that most leaders are seeing “increased inter-team conflict" resulting from return to work mandates.

There’s still broad disagreement about whether remote workers are as productive. The workers themselves say yes: 86% claim they’re equally or more productive at home, compared with only 14% who said they were less productive, according to a recent survey led by Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom.