Debates over remote working have been reignited by Amazon’s recent announcement that its employees will have to return to the office full-time from the start of next year.

Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy announced the move last week, through a blanket announcement published on the company website. Over a million company workers learned that hybrid working was soon to end, with staff expected back in the office five days a week.

Though it is not alone — other high-profile companies have rowed back on flexible working policies in recent weeks and months, including PWC, Deloitte and Manchester United — Amazon is one of comparatively few major corporations to insist on a full-time return.

Amazon is known to take a relatively tough stance on employees by modern day standards – last year it gave its managers carte blanche to fire employees who failed to turn up for their three days a week in the office — but its new move may be a step too far even for this global goliath.

The future will tell how it pans out for them, but such steps usually provoke a backlash from employees who have become accustomed to the flexibility of remote working and the benefits of not having to commute every day.

But by planning and communicating these announcements effectively, they can mitigate those risks with the following:

Engage with employees

Top-down edicts applied to topics that are important to people are highly unlikely to work in 2024. Before making any such decisions, companies should properly engage with their teams to fully understand what their reaction is likely to be, what their specific issues and concerns would be, and consider in advance how they could be resolved.

Internal communicators are in a strong position to influence this in partnership with HR teams and ensure that employees are kept on side and made to feel valued and listened to. Employee surveys, focus groups or engagement through Employee Resource Groups all require the touch of skilled internal communicators to keep people on-side and constructive and to pose the questions that will gather meaningful responses.

Use tiers of management

The company CEO may be the first to make an announcement, but it is the different layers of leadership and management that will be responsible for fielding questions from their teams and implementing policies.

These different tiers of management should be pre-briefed and properly equipped with the tools to enable them to coherently explain the practicalities and respond to questions with authority and clarity. A vital role for internal communicators is to develop the communication tools, such as FAQs and templates, that can help them do this.

Be flexible

In most large organisations, it is unlikely that one overarching policy on flexible working is going to work. There are too many different teams, types of work, and individual circumstances to make a strict blanket policy effective. Not every team or individual gets the same benefits from in-person collaboration.

Internal communicators can influence the wording of policy decisions to maintain the flexibility necessary to allow them to work in practice, and to encourage managers and team leaders to engage with their teams and maintain a two-way dialogue to find nuanced solutions that encourage greater productivity.

Strict, inflexible policies are likely to leave employees feeling they are not trusted, and can potentially lead to a culture of presenteeism and reduced productivity.

Be clear on the why

Decisions must clearly explain their benefits, to the organisation and the individuals within it. Return to office discussions can get bogged down in negativity, but there are always genuine benefits to creating face-to-face connections and encouraging collaboration that need to be clearly spelled out.

Treat it as an evolution

Portraying return to office decisions as final is risky. The business could easily change its mind if the policy doesn’t have the desired effect, or worse, if it suddenly loses a load of important employees or struggles to attract new talent. Recent research amongst 9,000 US firms by Flex Index revealed that only a third of companies who had announced strict five-day in-office rules had kept them in place.

Rowing back on flexible working policies is rarely a popular move, but if it is communicated skilfully and professionally, the potential negative reaction can be considerably mitigated.