Amazon's Return-To-Office Push Now Includes Moving Employees To Its Largest Urban Hubs

Amazon is stepping up its campaign to emphasize in-person work once again.

The tech giant informed employees working remotely or in cities with smaller offices that they may have to relocate to its largest corporate employment centers, The Wall Street Journal reports. Amazon's largest corporate offices — what it calls "main hubs" — include its headquarters in the Seattle area, its HQ2 campus in Arlington, Virginia, and locations in New York, San Francisco and Nashville.

Amazon's return-to-office push began in February when it announced a mandate for most employees to work in person three days per week. Its office headcount began growing massively when it opened the doors to Metropolitan Park, the 2.2M SF first phase of its HQ2 just outside of Washington, D.C., in May.

The company is among many large employers encountering worker resistance to pivots away from remote work, having seen protests and walkouts at its headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, at the end of May.

Amazon Vice President of Worldwide Economic Development Holly Sullivan told Bisnow in June that she hadn't heard a single complaint about in-person work from office employees based around Arlington and Nashville, where the company opened a 566K SF building in 2021 as part of a planned operations center.

Further construction at HQ2, in Nashville and in Bellevue was officially put on hold last year as Amazon said it was re-evaluating how best to use its physical spaces, but Sullivan said the success in filling up Metropolitan Park gave the company confidence in restarting those plans, potentially as early as next year.

In the past few months, executives at a growing number of companies are taking hard-line stances against perpetually remote work, prompting a Q2 boost in office occupancy and leasing.

Although it is offering relocation bonuses as a carrot to employees it has directed to move, Amazon has also wielded the stick by encouraging workers resistant to the change to either resign or seek transfers to other departments, Business Insider reports.