Amazon employees relocation deadline: Relocate or resign, says company
Thousands of Amazon employees given 30-day deadline to decide on relocating to cities like Seattle, Arlington, and Washington, DC or face losing job
Amazon employees have received a relocation deadline from the e-commerce giant asking them to relocate to major urban centres like Seattle, Arlington, and Washington, DC. According to media reports, the employees have been given 30 days to decide whether to relocate. They will also be given an additional 60 days to decide whether to start the relocation process or to tender their resignation.
Anxiety among employees
A Bloomberg report said that Amazon’s decision comes at a time when there are waves of layoffs in multiple industries, which is likely making staff members, impacted by the relocation directive, anxious.
Citing a source, the Bloomberg report further stated that the relocation order will impact Amazon employees across departments, adding that those with established careers, school-going children and parents are reluctant to relocate and disrupt their settled lives.
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‘Change in approach’
An Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg that for over a year, some teams in the company were trying to bring their teammates closer together to make them 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,” added the spokesperson.
CEO’s emphasis on AI use
The development comes days after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy laid out an ambitious road map for the company, highlighting the crucial changes to the company’s workforce strategy due to its increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Jassy reportedly stated in a memo to employees that the corporate workforce was likely to shrink in the coming years, mainly because of increasing efficiency gained from the large-scale implementation of generative AI and AI-driven tools throughout the company.
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‘AI integral part of Amazon’
The CEO pointed out that AI was now an integral part of Amazon’s operations, ranging from Alexa and customer shopping experiences to backend business operations.
“Technologies like Generative AI are rare; they come about once in a lifetime, and completely change what’s possible for customers and businesses. So, we are investing quite expansively, and the progress we are making is evident,” stated Jassy.
“You can see it in what we’re rolling out in Alexa+, our next generation Alexa personal assistant that’s meaningfully smarter, more capable, and is the first personal assistant that can take significant actions for customers on top of providing intelligent answers to virtually any question,” he added.