Amazon's 5-day RTO is proving to be more flexible in Europe than the US

• Internal documents say Amazon workers in the UK can apply to work from home up to two days a week.
• Staffers in the Netherlands are following previous guidance of three days in office, BI has learned.
• Amazon implemented a global five-days-a-week return-to-office policy on January 2.

Amazon's five-days-a-week return-to-office policy appears to be more flexible for some European employees than their US-based counterparts.

Employees in the UK can apply to work from home for one or two days a week, while Amazon workers in the Netherlands are following previous guidance allowing them to work from home for up to two days a week, Business Insider has learned.

A copy of Amazon's "Flexible Work Arrangement" policy document for the US, seen by BI, doesn't explicitly say employees can request to work from home for one or two days a week. The document, last updated on December 17, says Amazon "may grant exceptions for work arrangements" to staffers in the US "who are in good standing on a case-by-case basis."

Amazon announced in September that employees globally would be required to work from the office five days a week starting on January 2. Some locations have delayed the five-day RTO policy because of insufficient office space, while in other cases it appears to have been delayed by local employment requirements.

On December 20, Amazon's management team in the Netherlands sent employees an email, seen by BI, that said it had entered into discussions with its works council — an organization representing employees — to define and introduce a flexible working arrangement.

"Until further notice, while everyone is welcome and encouraged to work from the office for five days per week, you may continue to follow the current in-office guidance for your role and team into the new year," it said.

Under that guidance, employees in the Netherlands can work up to two days a week from home until they're notified of the outcome of the discussions between the works council and management, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Nafsika Karavida, an attorney at the law firm Reavis Page Jump, told BI that the differences between Amazon's RTO rollout in Europe and in the US were "most likely due to cultural, legal, and operational differences" that could limit its "ability to act unilaterally."

Karavida added that employers in the Netherlands cannot legally enforce an RTO policy without the approval of a works council.

Like Amazon employees in Germany, staffers in the UK can formally apply to work from home for one or two days a week, an internal policy document seen by BI said. It added that employees based in the UK had a "statutory right to make a formal application" to change their work location, among other working conditions. Approvals will be subject to a three-month trial period, the document said.

Karavida said Amazon's policy in the UK was shaped by flexible-working regulations that took effect last April. "Although these regulations do not grant employees an automatic right to work from home, they obligate employers to consider such requests reasonably on a case-by-case basis," she said.

Amazon faces RTO delays

The UK, Netherlands, and Germany are the latest examples of different implementations of Amazon's five-day RTO policy. An internal list identified more than 40 locations where Amazon's full five-day RTO policy was delayed, including Santa Clara, California; Hamburg, Germany; and Belfast, UK.

Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, said in a September blog post that returning full time to the office would help the company "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

An Amazon spokesperson referred BI to that blog post, in which Jassy also said that "it was not a given" that staffers could work remotely two days a week before the pandemic, adding, "That will also be true moving forward."

In the US, Amazon employees can submit requests for offsite work for a week or for more than 90 days. Those are also reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

But unlike the policies for the UK and Germany, the US's flexible-working document doesn't specifically mention the option for employees to formally apply to work from home for one or two days a week; it details only offsite-work and part-time-work arrangements.

An internal Amazon FAQ document circulated at the time of the RTO announcement last year said employees with existing approval, such as a "Military Spouse Remote Work Exception," didn't need to change where they worked.