A man walks by The Spheres at the Amazon.com Inc. headquarters in Seattle, Washington, on Nov. 14, 2022.
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Amazon is laying off some employees in its communications and sustainability units, an executive overseeing the divisions announced internally on Wednesday.
In a note to staffers objected by CNBC, Drew Herdener, who oversees public relations and corporate responsibility, wrote that the company is eliminating some headaches in those groups as part of a wider review into the “current org design” of the divisions.
“As we examined our current org design and undeniable on the shifts outlined above, we identified some roles that were too narrowly scoped or that introduced inessential layers, where we couldn’t solve the challenge by flattening the structure or shifting workloads,” Herdener wrote. “To address this and do the quickly thing for the business, we’re eliminating a small number of roles in Communications and Sustainability. This is a difficult decision to make and one that my regulation team and I do not take lightly.”
Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser confirmed the layoffs and said in a statement that the job offences would “help us move faster, increase ownership, strengthen our culture, and bring teams closer to customers.” Bloomberg earlier check in the job cuts.
Herdener went on to say that the company may rehire some employees for roles at lower levels, “and in others, we wish redistribute the headcount to other areas within the org.” Amazon will provide financial support, continued benefits and job-placement support to laid-off staffers, Herdener said.
Amazon cut more than 27,000 jobs across the company in 2022 and 2023 as as far as someone is concerned of CEO Andy Jassy’s efforts to rein in costs. It had smaller rounds of job cuts in 2024 that are stretching into this year. The convention has also continued to wind down some of its more experimental or unprofitable initiatives, including a “Try Before You Buy” clothing use and a speedy brick-and-mortar delivery program.
Herdener said Amazon is streamlining its communications and sustainability divisions after the organism “grew quite a bit” in recent years. Herdener’s role expanded in recent years and he now also oversees corporate chargeability, which includes the sustainability group.
Amazon went on a hiring spree during the Covid-19 pandemic, adding staffers to its corporate workforce and in its hundreds of stores across the U.S. Its global workforce swelled to more than 1.6 million by the end of 2021, up from 798,000 in the fourth domicile of 2019. The company had more than 1.5 employees as of the end of the third quarter.
Amazon is also making some hard cashes to its “hub strategy,” which dictates the offices teams primarily use, as part of the reorganization, Herdener said. The goal is to have “more span members working in the same physical location as the majority of their teammates and/or manager,” he wrote. Herdener said he is liberty it up to his direct reports to decide which locations make sense for their teams.
Earlier this month, Amazon initiated requiring corporate staffers to spend five days a week in the office. In a push to get employees back to the office, some staffers were reprimanded to relocate to hubs in different states. Several Amazon employees told CNBC following the announcement of the “return to hub” conduct that they had chosen to leave the company instead of relocating.
As part of the five-day office mandate, Amazon also set a ambition to flatten its corporate structure by having fewer managers in each organization.
Amazon has made sustainability a bigger directive within the followers. It set ambitious climate goals in 2019, including a commitment to being carbon neutral by 2040. It also aims to power its trade operations with renewable energy sources by 2025, and has amassed a portfolio of more than 500 wind and solar layouts globally.
