Amazon Exec Angers Staff By Admitting He Had ‘No Data’ to Support RTO Mandates

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Amazon Exec Angers Staff By Admitting He Had ‘No Data’ to Support RTO Mandates

An Amazon exec admitted to what many employees suspected, and multiple studies have shown, saying he had “no data either way” to support RTO mandates.

Amazon has been pushing employees to return to the office, even asking some employees to relocate to be closer to corporate offices. Like employees in many companies, Amazon staff have not accepted the RTO mandates willingly, and recent comments by Mike Hopkins, SVP of Amazon Video and Studios, have only made things worse.

According to Business Insider, when employees asked if he had any data to support the mandates, Hopkins said he had “no data either way.”

“I think it’s just time, it’s time to disagree and commit. We’re here, we’re back — it’s working,” he added. “I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.”

As Insider points out, Hopkins was referencing one of Amazon’s leadership principles that encourages employees to commit to a course of action once a decision is made, even if they disagree with it.

Needless to say, the comments did not go over well.

“What embarrassingly poor leadership,” one person wrote on the company’s internal Slack channel.

“Saying you ‘disagree and commit’ (or asking others to) when there is very little impact to you personally and great impact to someone else is not anything to be proud of, especially if you’ve done nothing to mitigate that impact,” another person wrote.

“He’s the one who needs to disagree and commit here,” one of the people wrote, referring to CEO Andy Jassy, who has been a vocal proponent of returning to the office.

Interestingly, not only does Hopkins not have data to support Amazon’s position, but the data increasingly supports remote work. In fact, a trio of studies show that RTO mandates have had a disastrous impact on companies, while two other studies show that remote staff work an average of 10% more and are 13% more productive.

The one employee hit the nail on the head: Perhaps it’s time for Amazon and other old-school companies to “disagree and commit” to what the data proves and what their employees want.

Amazon Exec Angers Staff By Admitting He Had ‘No Data’ to Support RTO Mandates
Matt Milano

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