Amazon is the latest company to bring staff back to the office three days a week

Amazon employees will be expected to work from the office at least three days per week starting May 1st, according to an email CEO Andy Jassy sent to staff posted on the company’s blog. Previously, it was up to individual teams to decide their in-office policies.

Jassy says the company’s leadership team decided to change the policy after observing that it’s easier to strengthen Amazon’s culture, collaborate on ideas, and learn from others in person. He acknowledges that some roles will be some exceptions to the policy, like some salespeople and customer support, but “that will be a small minority.”

“It’s not simple to bring many thousands of employees back to our offices around the world, so we’re going to give the teams that need to do that work some time to develop a plan,” Jassy says. “We know that it won’t be perfect at first, but the office experience will steadily improve over the coming months (and years) as our real estate and facilities teams smooth out the wrinkles, and ultimately keep evolving how we want our offices to be set up to capture the new ways we want to work.”

In moving to a three-days-in-the-office structure, Amazon joins companies like Apple and Starbucks that have already done so. Walmart’s tech staff will need to come into the office twice a week, while Disney will require four days in the office starting in March.