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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's recent return-to-office order might be more about staff reductions than improving watercooler brainstorming. His letter to employees talks about flattening the organization and having fewer managers. But that language raises suspicion among recruiting experts that the company wants to reduce headcount through attrition.
If Amazon wants to reduce headcount, "this is an easy way to do it," said Julia Pollak, chief economist at online job marketplace ZipRecruiter, of the return-to-office mandate. It might cause natural attrition from workers unhappy with the order and help the company avoid mass layoffs, she said.
"At the same time, you can always retain your superstar performers by negotiating exceptions for them on a one-on-one basis," Pollak said. But she also said it's possible Amazon had trouble running an effective remote work program.
Despite Amazon's return-to-work order, flexible work arrangements have remained constant, according to ZipRecruiter's quarterly analysis of labor market changes. The current share of remote and hybrid job postings in the tech industry is above 20%, similar to 2021 data, Pollak said. "We don't see much pullback," she said.
Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, a telecommuting research and consulting firm, said she sees return-to-office mandates as being connected to staff reduction goals.
Attrition goals
"There's no doubt that AI will replace many of the types of jobs people do at places like Amazon," Lister said. "Even prior to the pandemic, hybrid work reversals were often a thinly disguised attempt to get people to quit, rather than having to lay them off."
Even prior to the pandemic, hybrid work reversals were often a thinly disguised attempt to get people to quit rather than having to lay them off.
Kate ListerPresident, Global Workplace Analytics
For employers, remote and hybrid work options will produce three times as many job applications compared with non-remote positions, Pollak said. When companies offer these options, attrition falls around 35%, she said. "Workers who work remotely are prepared to take an 8% pay cut because they value it so much," she said.
There is little in job ad data that suggests Amazon's return-to-office order is a future of work trend. While there has been some pullback on fully remote jobs, at least in job listings, hybrid job ads are on the rise.
Employer preference is shifting to hybrid work, according to data from WilsonHCG, a recruitment processing outsourcing provider. It has found that remote job postings account for 3.4% of all job postings in the U.S., or about 220,000 jobs, a decline ranging from 5% to 6% a year ago. But there has been a shift to hybrid ads, which is nearing 2% of all job postings, nearly double that from 18 to 24 months ago, according to the firm.
Workplace flexibility in demand
What employers want is the ability to have workers on-site when needed, said Charles Faigle, executive vice president of talent solutions in the Americas at WilsonHCG. "It's all about flexibility within their workforce," he said.
The workforce is also shifting in other ways. TalentNeuron, a labor market intelligence firm, said it is seeing a rise in the 40-hour, four-day workweek, according to an analysis of job postings. The job areas with the highest rise for this trend are medical and health, engineering, quality assurance, IT, administrative and clerical, and operations and logistics.
"Many employees cite the four-day workweek as a primary incentive -- even over salary -- for the considerations around a role," said Erica Lee, a senior consultant at TalentNeuron.
The firm identified, for instance, 103,000 job postings in the medical and health care field that explicitly mentioned a four-day workweek. These job ads represented less than 5% of the total current job ads, but the overall trend of the four-day workweek has increased more than 50% over the last several years.
Dan Schwabel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, a research firm, said he sees a trend to tech employees losing remote work options, although it varies by companies.
"Some tech companies continue to offer flexible or fully remote options to attract and retain talent," Schawbel said. "Smaller startups and certain tech roles may still provide more flexibility."
Patrick Thibodeau is an editor at large for TechTarget Editorial who covers HCM and ERP technologies. He's worked for more than two decades as an enterprise IT reporter.
