- Amazon has told employees in Germany they can work from home for up to two days a week.
- A leaked internal document seen by BI says requests can be submitted from December 15.
- Amazon has a global mandate for all employees to return to the office five days a week starting in January.
Amazon employees in Germany can apply to work from home for up to two days a week when the company’s global return-to-office mandate takes effectBusiness Insider has learned.
Executives at the e-commerce giant told staff about the measure via Slack and email on Thursday and Friday and referred them to a new flexible working policy, two people familiar with the matter said.
According to the document, seen by Business Insider, people can apply for flexible working from December 15.
In September, Amazon announced a mandate for all employees worldwide return to the office full-time from January. Most of the company’s 1.5 million employees work in warehouses. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said at the time that the RTO action was intended to help the company “further strengthen” its culture and teams.
Amazon said it still expects employees in Germany to work from the office five days a week, and that it had a similar flexible work policy before the pandemic.
“Regular home working arrangements can be made for 1 day per week, exceptionally 2 days per week, and are limited to a period of one year,” according to the flexible work policy document.
It also says the policy applies to all Amazon employees in Germany, but not to Twitch and Audible employees. It added that Amazon may reconsider or change informal arrangements “at any time in its sole discretion.”
The measure includes two types of working arrangements: informal and formal. Under the formal arrangement, employees can request to work from home up to two days a week and change their scheduled hours, according to the document.
On an informal basis, managers can approve ad hoc requests submitted within 24 hours’ notice to work from home, the document said.
It added that formal flexible working arrangements change employees’ contractual terms and “require documentation.”
The document also states that Amazon will take disciplinary action, including termination of employment, for employees who do not comply with the policy.
When announcing the five-day RTO mandate in September, Jassy said he wanted Amazon to “operate like the largest startup in the world.”
He added: “That means having a passion for continuous invention for customers, strong urgency (for most big opportunities it’s a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, sloppiness and frugality, deeply connected collaboration (you have to join being joined at the hip with your teammates in devising and solving tough problems) and a shared commitment to each other.”
Amazon said in June that it is on track to have more than 40,000 permanent employees in Germany by the end of this year. It also announced a €10 billion (about $10.4 billion) investment in the country to expand its logistics network and cloud infrastructure.
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