Amazon wants to make RTO exceptions extremely rare, and workers are considering drastic hacks to comply

• Amazon is telling employees to relocate to their team’s nearest “hub” or find a new job.
• The company wants RTO policy exceptions to be extremely rare.
• Employees are considering drastic measures to comply with the order.

Amazon is doubling down on its plan to get employees back to work by making policy exceptions extremely rare. As a result, some employees are being forced to take drastic measures in order to comply with the order.

The company recently implemented a “return-to-hub” policy, requiring employees to work from the central locations assigned to each individual team rather than the office closest to their current city. Employees who refuse to relocate near their teams’ “hub” offices will have to either find a new job internally or leave via “voluntary resignation.”

Amazon executives told Insider that they have been told to make exceptions only in extreme cases. According to one source, the company’s goal is to keep the number of exceptions in the single digits across the board, including regional sales teams and protected groups, leaving a very small amount for individual cases. The sources requested anonymity because they were discussing sensitive issues.

Amazon RTO hacks

As a result, employees are going to great lengths. One user on Blind, an anonymous discussion app, mentioned that their husband was thinking about living in a van near Amazon’s Seattle headquarters to avoid having to relocate their family from Texas. Another user mentioned that they were thinking about flying to Seattle from San Francisco once a week. To post on Blind, these individuals must have an official work email address.

Other employees told Insider about other hacks they used to get around Amazon’s new strict policy. One option is to use a family member’s address near an Amazon office and fly in as needed. Another option is to notify Amazon that you intend to comply with the order and use the time they would need to relocate to find a new job.

Amazon is giving those who choose to relocate up to a few months to find a new place. According to one current employee, who spoke to Insider on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, Amazon offered a lump sum package of approximately $7,000 in cash and temporary housing for about a month in the new city they’re moving to.

Nonetheless, the relocation mandate is causing a huge uproar within the company, with many employees scrambling to figure out what to do. The unusually contentious return-to-work process at Amazon has resulted in an employee walkout, an internal petition, and repeated questions during internal meetings.

‘Deliver Butts to Seats’

One employee mocked Amazon’s famous leadership principles earlier this week in a widely shared post on an internal forum. The post, titled “Leadership Principles for RTO,” altered the 16 business dictums to reflect employee dissatisfaction with the situation.

One of the mock principles was “Deliver Butts to Seats,” a parody of “Deliver Results.”

“Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business, which are, of course, corporate real estate profits, and deliver them by forcing their employees to go to a hub office three days a week,” the report stated. “Despite the setbacks, they send nasty emails and put people on Pivot to ensure compliance.” Pivot is one of Amazon’s well-known performance-improvement strategies.