Amazon said Monday that it would allow many techs and corporate workers to continue working remotely indefinitely, as long as they can travel to the office when needed.
The new policy was announced in a blog post and is a change from Amazon's AMZN, -1.29% from the previous expectation that most employees would have to be in the office at least three days a week when offices reopen. after the COVID-19 pandemic in January.
The Seattle Times reported that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy signed Monday's message. The company's directors have the discretion to allow teams to work remotely.
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“We expect that there will be teams that continue working mostly remotely, others that will work some combination of remotely and in the office and still others that will decide customers are best served to have the teamwork mostly in the office,” Jassy wrote.
Most of the more than one million global employees of online retail giants are unable to work remotely as they perform their jobs in the fulfillment and transportation departments, receive orders and deliver them to their customers.
However, approximately 50,000 office and technology employees work at the company's vast headquarters in downtown Seattle's campus and South Lake Union. It lacks and harms local restaurants and other businesses.
Amazon's reinstatement policy update follows similar moves from other major tech companies. Microsoft MSFT, -0.21%, announced last month that it has postponed office reopening indefinitely.
