Tech

Amazon To Allow Some Employees To Work Remotely Indefinitely

About 50,000 tech and corporate employees who work at the company's Seattle headquarters won't be required to be in office.

Amazon To Allow Some Employees To Work Remotely Indefinitely
Elaine Thompson / AP
SMS

Amazon said Monday it will allow many tech and corporate workers to continue working remotely indefinitely, as long as they can commute to the office when necessary.

The new policy was announced in a blog post and is a change from Amazon's previous expectation that most employees would need to be in the office at least three days a week when offices reopen from the COVID-19 pandemic in January.

"We expect that there will be teams that continue working mostly remotely, others that will work some combination of remotely and in the office, and still others that will decide customers are best served having the team work mostly in the office," company CEO Andy Jassy wrote.

Most of the online retail giant's more than 1 million global employees cannot work remotely because they perform their duties in the company's fulfillment and transportation division, grabbing orders and delivering them to customers.

But about 50,000 tech and office employees work at the company's sprawling headquarters downtown Seattle campus and in the city's South Lake Union neighborhood. Their absence will hurt nearby restaurants and other businesses.

Amazon's update to its return-to-work policy followed similar moves from other big technology companies. Microsoft announced last month that it had postponed reopening its offices indefinitely.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.