Amazon return to office: workers back to office 5 days a week as remote working policies end - UK laws, rules

• Amazon is requiring all employees to return to the office five days a week
• This restores the pre-Covid working arrangement
• Previous return-to-office policies have faced employee backlash, including a petition signed by over 20,000 workers and a walkout
• The company will also reinstate assigned desks in offices that used hot-desking before the pandemic

The CEO of one of the world’s largest companies has told his employees that they will be required to return to the office five days a week starting next year.

Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, said in a memo that the company expects staff to work in the office from 2 January 2025, except in cases of extenuating circumstances, mirroring pre-Covid arrangements.

It follows Amazon’s 2023 policy change, which required corporate employees to be in the office three days a week - a shift from the remote and hybrid work models that gained popularity during the pandemic.

Jassy said this had “strengthened our conviction about the benefits” of being in the office full-time.

The earlier policy faced pushback from employees, with over 20,000 signing a petition calling for a reconsideration of the return-to-office policy.

Workers at Amazon's Seattle headquarters staged a walkout, which also protested against cost-cutting measures and layoffs affecting thousands since late 2023.

Will everyone be forced back into the office?

Jassy has said that employees with extenuating circumstances or approved remote work agreements with their managers would not be forced back into the office. “Before the pandemic, not everybody was in the office five days a week, every week,” he said.

“If you or your child were sick, if you had some sort of house emergency, if you were on the road seeing customers or partners, if you needed a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment, people worked remotely.

“This was understood, and will be moving forward as well.” But Jassy added that being in the office would make the company “better set up to invent, collaborate and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business”

Amazon will also reintroduce assigned desks in offices that had switched to hot-desking prior to the pandemic, including in its US headquarters.

Amanda Gearing, senior organiser for GMB, the trade union representing Amazon workers in the UK, said: “This is yet another example of how Amazon has won its reputation as one of the worst employers around.”

She said “record numbers” of staff were joining the union, after a ballot of workers at its Coventry site for union recognition failed to reach a majority in July.

What is the law in the UK?

In the UK, workers currently have some rights when it comes to requesting flexible or remote working, but the law is fairly limited.

All employees have the right to request flexible working, including working from home, after 26 weeks (6 months) of continuous employment. This request can be made once every 12 months.

Employers are required to consider these requests in a "reasonable manner," but they can refuse them for various reasons, such as business needs, impact on performance or additional costs.

The current law only gives employees the right to request flexible working, not the automatic right to work from home. Employers can generally legally require workers to come to the office if they provide a valid business reason for refusal.

As it's part of their employment contract, and unless there's a specific agreement to allow remote working, if an employer requires someone to come to the office, and no agreement to work remotely exists, employees must comply.

After the Covid pandemic, many employers adopted hybrid or remote working policies, but these are often company policies rather than legal obligations. This means they can usually be changed or revoked at the employer's discretion.

Could that change?

But the Labour government has proposed granting workers a default right to work from home, aiming to make flexible working the norm rather than the exception.

Labour's proposals would allow workers to request flexible or remote working from their first day of employment, rather than after six months, and would shift the burden more onto employers to justify why an employee cannot work remotely.

This would make it harder for companies to deny work-from-home requests without a good reason, increasing the power of employees to secure flexible arrangements.

The policy is part of a broader plan to promote a flexible and modern workplace culture, and aims to increase work-life balance, enhance productivity and support employees with caregiving responsibilities

But the process of turning the proposal into law could take several months to over a year, depending on parliamentary schedules and priorities.

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