Why moves by Amazon and comments by Jamie Dimon don’t threaten an end to remote work benefits

If your employer lets you work remotely one or more days a week, and you highly value that kind of flexibility, you probably didn’t love hearing last week that Amazon will soon require its corporate employees to return to the office five days a week.

If your employer lets you work remotely one or more days a week, and you highly value that kind of flexibility, you probably didn’t love hearing last week that Amazon will soon require its corporate employees to return to the office five days a week. Or when AT&T last year announced it was consolidating offices and requiring managers to work on site at least three days a week — which meant some managers who lived near an office that was closing had to relocate or quit. Or even when JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, most of whose employees are already working in the office five days, publicly expressed displeasure last week that more government employees weren’t working on site in federal buildings, which he described as “empty,” according to various news reports. Whenever a big player publicly cracks the whip on requiring employees to be in the office full time, the worry is that other employers will follow suit. But for two key reasons, these kinds of public proclamations don’t signal a broader demise of remote work benefits. In the case of Amazon, CEO Andy Jassy’s memo announcing his new RTO mandate said all the usual things about wanting to strengthen in-person collaboration and company culture.