Laszlo Bock, a consultant and former Google executive, likened Andy Jassy’s request for Amazon employees to spend five days a week in the office to ordering regular food at a restaurant.
Suppose hamburgers are your go-to choice at your regular restaurant and suddenly you decide to have grilled chicken, as Bock suggests. The chicken turns out to be good, “no better than hamburgers, no worse.” Naturally, you go back to the hamburger, or the regular one.
“You go back to what you’re comfortable with,” Book said. luck. the Gretel The co-founder of the AI data platform is an expert on corporate culture and was a senior executive at Google from 2006 to 2016, during which time the tech giant was named a best company to work for dozens of times. “Why would you want to eat a chicken sandwich again?” he asked.
It’s a classic story of executives returning to the familiar, full-time schedule of in-person work after five years of trying or hesitating to flexible, remote or hybrid work schedules. Amazon joined the ranks this week, with Jassy increasing the number of mandatory in-office days from three to five, in a memo sent to employees Monday. Amazon responded to requests for comment by noting that Amazon is still working on flexible, remote or hybrid schedules. luck To the mentioned note.
The memo, posted on the company’s website, stressed the importance of in-person attendance as a source of company culture and collaboration. It also outlined a structural change to reduce the number of employees in management positions.
Bock described the move as a “victory for traditional management over innovative management,” explaining that the latter approach is more difficult and requires more data to support its implementation.
Why do CEOs hate flexible working?
Hybrid work can be a successful boost to productivity if managed well, Bock said, noting that Early studiesworking with companies like atlasian Employers’ success in implementing focus days during the early days of the pandemic led to increased productivity as companies put effort into their plans. In turn, employees responded positively to it, added Bock, author of “The World Day of … New York Times best seller Work Rules!: Inside Google Insights to Transform Your Life and Leadership.
But doing hybrid work well requires resources, a clear plan, and above all, buy-in. Most companies don’t put in the effort without a guarantee of results, thereby dampening the potential benefits of hybrid work. And without an effective flexible schedule, the downsides of hybrid work become more apparent—including a disjointed culture, a sense of disconnect, a general culture, and managers who don’t feel in control, he said.
“From a company perspective, there’s no clear, conclusive evidence that this is a good thing,” Bock said. Because it’s such a big change, executives need a sudden signal to change course. “Employees love it” because they value their autonomy and freedom. But they lose out when employers, especially large companies like Amazon that struggle with their size, pull back on hybrid plans.
In a sense, companies got hybrid work wrong, abandoning a new strategy once it lost its appeal. Or, to put it another way, “executives created a self-fulfilling prophecy that is now dragging people back to their offices kicking and screaming.”
Is Amazon Really Losing Talent?
Amazon’s announcement wasn’t exactly well received. Some employees expressed their dismay and dismay, with one posting on Slack that it was a sign of “backtracking,” according to Business Insider.
Companies risk losing top talent when they shirk flexibility, but Bock seems to think Amazon isn’t taking a terrible gamble here. “Very few people vote with their feet,” he said, adding that the strategy is unlikely to hurt the company in the long run. He noted that while it’s controversial and many of Amazon’s remote or hybrid employees are likely to be upset, many won’t leave. Successful companies will continue to have a large talent pool to draw from, he said, even if they issue polarizing ultimatums.
As for the new management strategy, Bock sees it as a way to reduce micromanagement. “It’s a very clear call to productivity, but it’s also a call for managers to focus on making things work better,” he said. He pointed to Google’s Rule of Seven, which did not hire managers for teams of fewer than seven employees to spread out their time and limit over-involvement that could border on dominance.
However, with all this change, he “imagines”[s] “It will be a very stressful time for Amazon managers.” While he has been heavily criticized online, this is not unusual for Amazon. He said it “reflects their values,” a tight, intense organizational culture rooted in close management.
Describing the memo as “completely predictable and very thoughtful,” Bock praised their data-driven approach and said many companies are likely to follow suit. He added that this approach is probably better in the long run as humans crave social connection and tend to miss out on that during poorly executed hybrid plans.
Rather than issuing a decree like a banking CEO who simply sees recovery time as important, Amazon is tying its mandate to data and internal culture, Bock explained. While some companies have tried to wait out the (still imminent) downturn to get their way in the office, others have gone “gradual.”Boil the frog“The way, neither of them were effective at all.”
But Amazon is likely to succeed. “They’re going to enforce it… and they’re going to make it a reality,” Bock says. He has no doubt that they’ll measure it, monitor it, and fire people who don’t follow the rules.
More decrees may be forthcoming. Amazon is a bellwether for others, and Bock noted that “all the tech companies have moved in this direction.” In other words, “most companies are doing nothing, and they’re still ordering cheeseburgers.”
“Devoted student. Bacon advocate. Beer scholar. Troublemaker. Falls down a lot. Typical coffee enthusiast.”