Amazon is tracking employee badge swipes ahead of its return-to-office mandate. Some workers are worried.
Elaine Thompson/AP
- Amazon tracks team-level office badge data, internal emails show.
- Companies commonly use badge data for facilities management and safety reasons.
- Workers fear this data will be used to monitor for compliance with its return-to-office mandate.
Next week, Amazon's mandate that employees come into their assigned offices at least three days a week goes into effect. And, as Insider previously reported, anxiety over the issue is high among employees who are not clear what the repercussions are if they don't — or can't —immediately comply.
The company has made it clear in a Q&A issued last month that unless an employee has received a rare exemption to work remotely, they must come to the office. The internal communication, seen by Insider, suggested that employees may need to move closer to their assigned offices, or even consider changing jobs or teams within Amazon to roles that use offices nearer to their homes, rather than lobby for permanent remote status.
One of the contentious issues among employees is how Amazon plans to use employee badging data to track them. While it can be common practice for companies to track badge data to understand office usage, some Amazon employees are worried that Amazon would use it to punish those who don't adhere to the three-times-a-week return-to-office policy, according to Slack messages seen by Insider.
Amazon currently shares a weekly building occupancy report with managers, according to emails seen by Insider. It also shares an "Attendance Dashboard" that provides a "team level metric only," but not "individual attendance tracking," one of the emails said.
Amazon's spokesperson told Insider sharing such data is common practice, giving senior leaders "anonymized information about how many people use our buildings to help with things like planning facilities needs and ensuring we can account for people on-site if there happens to be an emergency."
Still, there seems to be some lingering doubts. One person told Insider that team-level data wasn't actively shared pre-pandemic, and it can help managers track individual attendance and more aggressively push the RTO policy.
In an internal document put together by Amazon's HR team in March, seen by Insider, one employee asked whether badge scans will be monitored to "verify 3 days a week adherence." In response, an Amazon manager wrote badge scan data has been shared "for some time now," and the team was "unsure" how it will be enforced "at least at the start of the RTO."
Amazon has a history of using monitoring technology. In 2021, Vice reported on internal documents that detailed how it used handheld scanners to track the productivity of warehouse workers. Amazon delivery drivers have told Insider about the AI cameras installed in their vehicles that alert them if they "skip a stop sign or speed," technology the company says it uses for safety reasons. In other words, office workers' concerns about how the company may monitor office attendance are not completely out of the blue.
Read the full story: Amazon's rush to bring employees back to office stirs anxiety over badge tracking, relocation, and impact on performance reviews
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