Insider Finance - Business - Insider Today: Amazon’s RTO drama

What’s the most offensive thing you can say to a white-collar worker?

Return to office. 

Across the country, companies are calling employees back to the office. But what was a reasonable request just a few years ago is now viewed as blasphemous by some workers.

Perhaps the best example of the drama surrounding RTO policies is Amazon.

The tech giant’s attempt to get employees back to the office at least three days a week has been tumultuous, to put it mildly. A petition against Amazon’s RTO policy was signed by some 30,0000 employees, but the company hasn’t budged on its stance.

Eugene Kim, Insider’s resident Amazon expert, has another update on the company’s ongoing RTO saga. 

Some Amazon staff received an email warning about their office-attendance records. Further complicating matters was the fact some employees say they got the email in error since they were already complying with the policy. 

The email has also raised concerns among employees about the possibility of Amazon tracking individual office-attendance records, despite previously saying it saved only “anonymized” data.

The entire episode left some employees outraged, Eugene reports. 

"Is this supposed to scare people?" one employee wrote in an internal Slack channel.

The reality, though, is that the remote work revolution launched as a result of the pandemic is crashing back down to Earth, Insider’s Jacob Zinkula writes. 

Simply put: People are less productive when they work from home. 

A study from economists at MIT and UCLA found productivity fell by 18% when people worked from home.

And before you say you’re actually more productive at home, understand the research tells a different story. The study also found workers who prefer being remote are 27% less productive at home than at the office.

If that isn’t enough to convince you to make the commute to the office, consider this take from a former tech leader. Brandon Southern, who worked at eBay, GameStop, and Amazon, said there are just too many benefits remote workers miss out on from not being in the office. 

Whether it’s collaborating, accidental eavesdropping, or getting face time with leaders, there are elements to in-office work that don’t translate across Zooms and Slacks, Brandon argues.

Before the opening bell: US stock futures are down early Friday as investors digest earnings and the latest US inflation data.

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