Amazon is now cracking down on corporate employees bypassing office hours.
According to Business Insider, citing inside sources, Amazon is monitoring the amount of time corporate staff spend in the office. Certain teams, including those in the retail and cloud computing sectors, were informed via Slack messages that they must be present for at least two hours for their attendance to be counted. Other teams must be in for at least six hours.
This initiative is part of Amazon’s effort to curb “coffee badging” — a tactic where employees check in at the office, grab coffee, and then leave, as reported by Insider.
Amazon’s return-to-office (RTO) policies have faced resistance from employees. In August 2023, the company announced a requirement for employees to be in the office three days a week. Amazon also started tracking attendance and sharing records with non-compliant employees. At that time, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy stated that if employees could not “disagree and commit,” their future at Amazon might be in jeopardy.
This latest measure coincides with Amazon’s Prime Day event, projected to drive sales up to $14 billion over two days, representing one of the year’s most profitable periods for the retail giant and a significant event for the e-commerce sector.