Return to office mandate: has Amazon signalled the start of the post-diversity era?

Amazon’s call for employees to work for five days a week in the office is part of a growing trend among large firms. But there are risks attached, one of which could see executives facing accusations of hypocrisy, writes Henley Business School’s Dr Melissa Carr

Amazon has called time on remote working, asking employees to return to the office five days a week. Amazon is the latest in a line of well-known employers mandating a five days per week return to the office (RTO): Dell, UPS and Boots have done the same.

While a full-time office-based approach is atypical, we have witnessed a range of companies mandating some return to the office and to pre-pandemic working practices.

However, the picture is probably more nuanced than these high-profile stories suggest. While some companies are moving back to the office, others are expanding flexible working practices. In the UK, these companies buck a trend where the government’s employment rights bills will likely propose a raft of changes including flexible working from day one.

When we look at the discourse that surrounds RTO mandates, company leaders often quote innovation, creativity, teamwork and productivity. There is truth in that these attributes require more conscious work when people are based remotely, however whether this can be achieved through full time RTO seems unlikely. Limited evidence supports full time RTO as improving things such as innovation and creativity.

However, there is research to suggest that some form of flexible working practices can improve employee engagement and wellbeing, benefiting those with caring responsibilities, disabilities and neurodiversity and minority groups.

Is there an issue of trust?

The issue feels to be one of trust where companies have little trust that their employees are being ‘productive’ when they cannot see them. In essence, productivity is often conflated with presenteeism.

However, there also seems to be a disconnect between the lived experiences of senior leaders and their employees. Starbucks epitomised this recently, with an RTO office requirement of three days a week. It must therefore have felt difficult for Starbucks employees to learn that their new CEO was being provided with a satellite office in his home in California and a private jet to help him commute to the HQ in Seattle.

Has the flexible working cycle come to an end?

Which leads me to the issue of diversity and inclusion and are we seeing evidence that in some quarters, we are post-diversity?

It has been suggested that organisations work on cycles of diversity initiatives. In the wake of Black Lives Matters, we saw chief diversity officers being hired in waves, yet it has been reported these posts are experiencing high turnover and being terminated by companies such as Netflix and Warner Bros.

Four years since the start of the pandemic and the “new normal” we all discussed, it can also feel that in some organisations, the flexible working cycle has ended. Flexible working may benefit some groups within society, but these (predominately male, white) CEOs are calling time.

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