September is typically a time associated with back-to-school. But this year, particularly in the corporate world, the water cooler talk was more about return-to-office (RTO) mandates. CEOs across several large corporations, including Amazon, Disney, Starbucks, and JPMorgan Chase, have announced new return-to-work policies and in-office mandates, causing a stir among employees and the media.
It’s not simply the fact these announcements were made, but how they’ve been communicated. Andrew Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, became the face of the conversation after his ‘optimistic’ communications strategy to share the mandate with employees via company memo turned press release. One Amazon employee was quoted, “At first, I didn’t quite believe it. After all, who expects to get career-altering news from a news article instead of your employer?”
Other CEOs, like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, have been consistently vocal about their distaste for remote work. CEOs Brian Niccol of Starbucks and Bob Igor of Disney have also become leaders associated with the topic.
How have these communications strategies of in-office mandates, whether optimistic or pessimistic, affected the CEOs’ reputations across these enterprise businesses? Through AI-powered data analysis, here’s what we discovered.
Amazon saw an 11x increase in RTO mentions in September, while other associated corporations got by quietly
Fig. 1: Mentions of companies’ return-to-office policies, by Signal AI
Amazon’s association with Return-to-Office (RTO) conversations saw a significant spike in September, an 11-fold increase from the previous month.
The other major corporations associated with this topic included Disney, Amazon, Starbucks, and JPMorgan Chase, though their share of voice was minimal. RTO made up only .46% of all conversations for Amazon, however, sentiment on the topic dipped in September with the spike in mentions.
Comparing industries, sentiment is most negative for the Tech sector
The backlash around RTO in the Tech industry can be traced back to the pandemic, and the reasons are clear. Companies were forced to offer more flexible working options during lockdowns, transitioning to fully remote work. Now, they’re reversing those decisions, and other CEOs seem to be following suit. According to the KPMG 2024 CEO Outlook Survey, 83% of CEOs say they will return to work five days a week in the next three years.
Fig. 2: Sentiment around conversations about return-to-office policies across industries, by Signal AI
Top companies within the Tech sector* are seeing the biggest backlash to their reputations, followed by Finance and Professional Services. Several publications have reported dissatisfaction among Amazon employees following the announcements, claiming “I’d rather go back to school than return to an office.”
Though Andrew Jassy became the face of RTO conversations, Jamie Dimon has the lowest sentiment score
Here’s how the return-to-office conversation fared for each executive. Andrew Jassy had the largest share of voice on the topic, at 7% of his overall coverage, yet his sentiment scored the highest. Sentiment is most negative for Jamie Dimon, followed by Brian Niccol, Bob Iger, and Andrew Jassy.
Fig. 3: Key executives’ sentiment and share of voice on return-to-office policy debates, by Signal AI
The executive communications strategy of some of the world’s most powerful CEOs is that remote work comes with a wide range of issues.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is famously outspoken about the push to return to the office, arguing that remote work hinders “spontaneous idea generation,” as quoted in Fortune. Some articles have framed Dimon’s argument as “chiding” or “scolding,” a stark difference from Andrew Jassy’s “optimistic” viewpoint of better collaboration, culture, and brainstorming in the office.
Brian Niccol of Starbucks released a similar ‘Message from Brian’ on their company site, and was quoted saying, “We’re all adults here.” Other headlines read his communication strategy as ‘tough words.’ Bob Igor was also called out in headlines for a “failure of imagination about how to innovate.”
So what’s the strategy?
Business leaders and their employees have been engaged in a tug-of-war over working conditions, and the backlash from employees has come in waves. In 2022, Fortune wrote about ‘the great return-to-office war’ after pandemic restrictions scaled back. In 2023, we saw corporations surrounded in chaos around mass layoffs, particularly for the Tech and Finance industries. In 2024, labor union strikes among disgruntled employees have gone through the roof. Overall, have leaders learned their lessons?
In the debate between employees and employers, employees feel like they’re coming from behind. Job seekers right now aren’t just seeking new roles, benefits, and opportunities, they’re openly declaring “desperation” as they start “rage applying” elsewhere. They aren’t backing down quietly— they’re openly voicing their frustrations, sharing petitions and survey results with their leadership, and even threatening walk-outs and boycotts.
This signal of employee dissatisfaction is not to be ignored. A noteworthy, data-driven conversation on communications strategy with C-level leaders should include both internal and external monitoring of how your employees are showing up and voicing frustrations.
“As comms professionals, we often think about the signals we get outside the organization… But a lot of the time, the signals we’re picking up externally started internally.” – Kareen Atkinson for Signal in the Noise.
How your employees feel about you as an employer and how you roll out employee benefits and policies could mean a significant reputational risk for top executives, a major representation of your brand.
Research Methodology
Signal AI ingests and analyzes data from over 5 million documents daily, spanning 226 markets and 75 languages. Our AI-powered web app delivers actionable insights, offering companies access to media coverage, key industry trends, 100+ trained topics, and events. Learn more here.
Date range: January – September 2024.
*Corporate analysis: when looking at overall industries this report includes data from the Signal AI 500, which looks at 500 of the most talked about companies across 20+ industries. Starbucks (rank 268 of 500), JPMorgan Chase (rank 200 of 500), Amazon (rank 114 of 500), The Walt Disney Company (rank 270 of 500).
