Amazon tells staff to relocate to be near managers, teams – report

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is ordering some corporate employees to relocate to move closer to their managers and teams, Bloomberg News reported.

Employees are being told to relocate to cities like Seattle; Arlington, Virginia; and Washington DC, which in some cases would require them to move across the country, the report added, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The U.S. tech and e-commerce giant is mostly informing the staff in one-on-one meetings and town halls rather than sending out a mass email, the report noted.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.

The relocation policy would affect thousands of employees on several teams, said one of the people, according to the report.

One employee noted that their manager informed the team of the requirement to move and told them they had 30 days to decide. Then they had 60 days to either resign or start their relocation process. The person also said that there would be no severance for staff who resign because of relocation.

A spokesperson for Amazon told the news outlet that “for more than a year now, some teams have been working to bring their teammates closer together to help them be as effective as possible, but there isn’t a one-size-fits all approach and there hasn’t been a change in our approach as a company.”

The spokesperson added that “we hear from the majority of our teammates that they love the energy from being located together, and whenever someone chooses to or is asked to relocate, we work with them to offer support based on their individual circumstances.”

The initiative comes at a time when the workforce is already concerned about job cuts and warnings from the top that AI will reduce the employee strength in the coming years.

Earlier this year, CEO Andy Jassy ordered employees to return to the office five days a week but there was no need to relocate to specific offices. The company has satellite workplaces in the U.S. including in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Dallas and Austin, which gave people flexibility about where they lived, the report noted. Many people were hired to fully remote positions during the pandemic.

In 2022, Jassy started Amazon’s biggest-ever round of corporate job cuts, which led to 27,000 roles being eliminated. Since then, there have been several smaller rounds of cuts targeting specific departments.

On Tuesday, Jassy said he expects the company’s workforce to be reduced in coming years due to the advancements in AI that would be able to perform some employee functions.