Amazon employees will return to the office five days a week starting Jan. 2, 2025, according to a memo from CEO Andy Jassy.

Employees have been working in person three days a week since May 1, 2023, and Jassy said the move has “strengthened our conviction about the benefits.”

“We want to operate like the world’s largest startup,” Jassy wrote.

In the memo to the company posted Monday, Jassy said he and the senior leadership team — or s-team for short — think Amazon can improve the tech giant’s structure to better deliver for customers.

“Before the pandemic, not everybody was in the office five days a week, every week. If you or your child were sick, if you had some sort of house emergency, if you were on the road seeing customers or partners, if you needed a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment, people worked remotely,” Jassy wrote. “This was understood, and will be moving forward as well. But before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward—our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances (like the ones mentioned above) or if you already have a remote work exception approved through your s-team leader.”

The announcement was long requested by civic and business leaders, who have pushed for employers to return to the office.

“Amazon employees and other employees that work in offices are customers for lots of small businesses, and that’s job creation, tax revenue for those small businesses and the city of Seattle,” said Jon Scholes, the president of the Downtown Seattle Association.

He cited data that show Seattle office worker foot traffic only at 62% of 2019 levels on a five-day average. That number likely will creep up when employees return full-time in January.

“It’s a big endorsement of the value of being back in person,” Scholes said.

Seattle City Council member Bob Kettle, who represents downtown, also cheered the move, noting how the area near Amazon’s headquarters improved when workers returned three days a week in 2023.

“You can already see it in South Lake Union in terms of the difference it makes on the streets, whether it’s from the retail, from the economy, but also public safety, which in turn helps the economy,” said Kettle.

Shivank Goel, an Amazon engineer, said he sees the positives in returning to work in person.

“It might enhance our collaboration,” Goel said, adding that every employee will have to make decisions.

“I’ll have to maybe buy a car to travel there and plan around that,” he said. “I think it will have a much bigger impact on people with families who have bought homes far away from the office, and with the traffic conditions, I think it will take a little bit to adjust to,” Goel said.

Jassy also said in the memo that Amazon intends to return to assigned desks in offices that previously had the structure, including the Puget Sound and Arlington, Virginia headquarters.

“We understand that some of our teammates may have set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments,” the memo reads.

Jassy added that he is optimistic the changes will help strengthen the culture and effectiveness of teams at Amazon.

“Most decisions we make are two-way doors, and as such, we want more of our teammates feeling like they can move fast without unnecessary processes, meetings, mechanisms, and layers that create overhead and waste valuable time,” Jassy said.

Jassy also announced the intention to have fewer managers, which the s-team hopes will empower and give more ownership to employees.

Hundreds of employees staged a walkout and rallied outside Amazon’s headquarters last year as the company enforced its return-to-office mandate.

Jassy took over as CEO from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2021.