Amazon clamps down on employees defying RTO mandate 

Amazon has reportedly doubled down on making sure employees return to the office by monitoring individual badge swipes into office buildings.

Since May this year, the tech giant has mandated that employees return to the office at least three days a week and in March, rejected a petition from about 30,000 employees calling for CEO Andy Jessy to cancel his return-to-office directive.

According to Kiro 7, screenshots obtained by the Puget Sound Business Journal highlighted an internal memo notifying employees their movement can now be tracked via employee-level “badge reports” that can go back eight weeks. It is a change from the organisation’s previous policy where reports were generated from an aggregated perspective and not from individual employees.

“This tool gives employees and managers visibility into the days they badged into a corporate building,” Amazon spokesperson Rob Munoz said in an emailed statement to the Puget Sound Business Journal. “The information will help guide conversations as needed between employees and managers about coming into the office with their colleagues.”

Amazon’s return-to-office policy has faced pushback from employees, with many staging protests and walkouts against the policy.

READ MORE: Full remote work is not an option, Amazon employees told

Earlier this year, Jessy called on employees to accept the return to office or seek alternative employment.  “It’s past the time to disagree and commit. And if you can’t disagree and commit, I can also understand that, but it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon because we are going back to the office at least three times a week, and it’s not right for all of our teammates to be in three days a week and for people to refuse to do so,” he said.