Amazon rolled out a manager dashboard in December that tracks not just whether employees come to the office, but exactly how long they stay. The system categorizes workers as “Low-Time Badgers,” “Zero Badgers,” and “Unassigned Building Badgers,” giving managers detailed attendance data to enforce the company’s five-day office mandate.
The dashboard pulls badge-swipe data and shows managers each worker’s office habits over the past eight weeks. Information updates daily at 5 p.m. Pacific time, revealing how often people come in, how many hours they spend there, and which buildings they visit.
Workers get sorted automatically: “Low-Time Badgers” average under four hours daily in the office, “Zero Badgers” haven’t swiped into any building during the tracking period, and “Unassigned Building Badgers” regularly visit offices other than their assigned workplace.
An internal document says these labels help identify people “operating significantly outside documented in-office expectations.” Previously, managers had to request this information from HR. Now they can access it directly whenever they want.
Amazon’s return-to-office journey has been contentious. In February 2023, CEO Andy Jassy required three office days per week starting in May. About 20,000 employees signed a petition protesting the change, and hundreds walked out at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.
Then in September 2024, Jassy announced a five-day mandate effective January 2, 2025, one of the strictest policies among major tech companies. Over 500 AWS employees wrote a letter calling the decision unsubstantiated by data. More than 37,000 workers joined an internal message channel to complain. One survey found 91% of Amazon workers were dissatisfied, and 73% were considering leaving.
AWS CEO Matt Garman told unhappy employees they could quit. Jassy denied the policy was meant to trigger voluntary departures, though many employees suspected otherwise.
Before this dashboard, employees found workarounds. “Coffee badging” became common, workers would swipe in, grab coffee, chat briefly, then leave. The badge system counted it as attendance even though they weren’t working there all day.
In mid-2024, Amazon started requiring minimum office hours for visits to count, ranging from two to six hours depending on the team. One employee even scanned their badge at a Whole Foods, which Amazon owns, to game the system.
Employees complained Amazon never officially announced these hour requirements. “It’s all just so not transparent, it’s maddening,” one worker wrote on the company’s internal Slack. Another said, “Remember when we were measured on metrics that actually mattered?”
The new dashboard eliminates these loopholes. Brief appearances now flag you as a Low-Time Badger. Showing up to the wrong building puts you in a different category.
Amazon frames the dashboard as supporting collaboration and culture. A spokesperson said the company has provided similar tools to managers for over a year and the new system simply standardizes them across the corporate workforce.
The company says managers should use the data to have conversations with teams, not just monitor remotely. An internal document instructs leaders to use their judgment before taking action and to “promote meaningful team collaboration through direct interactions.”
The system tracks office employees only, not warehouse workers or contractors.
Amazon isn’t alone in tracking office presence. Samsung rolled out a similar tool to discourage coffee badging. Dell tracks hybrid workers’ on-site presence with potential impacts on pay and advancement. Bank of America warns that non-compliance could lead to discipline. JPMorgan’s dashboard calculates what percentage of eligible days employees spend in the office. UK accounting firm PwC tracks employee locations to enforce its return-to-office policy.
A Resume Builder survey found 80% of employers lost talent due to return-to-office rules, but about a quarter plan to increase in-office days anyway. Another survey revealed a quarter of executives admitted they hoped return-to-office policies would cause voluntary turnover.
Workers can no longer treat office attendance as a formality. The system creates a detailed record of physical presence, raising new questions: Does leaving the badged area for a bathroom break count as leaving? Does taking a phone call in your car show up as departing early?
For employees who built their lives around remote or hybrid work, those who moved away from offices, workers with disabilities needing flexibility, parents with caregiving responsibilities, this represents a significant tightening of control.
One employee captured the sentiment: “Working here feels more and more like middle school every day.”
The dashboard raises a fundamental issue: Does Amazon trust its employees? The company says it wants to strengthen culture and collaboration, but culture doesn’t come from forcing people into assigned seats for set hours. The system measures presence, not results.
Research suggests Amazon may be making a mistake. Stanford University studies found employees working from home two days weekly are as productive as full-time office workers and less likely to quit. Research also shows rigid return-to-office rules make it harder to hire diverse talent, as women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ workers, and people with disabilities strongly prefer flexibility.
Some companies take different approaches. Spotify lets workers work from anywhere and only asks teams to meet in person one week annually, prioritizing flexibility over location.
Amazon’s corporate workers will be in the office five days a week, and managers will know exactly how long they stay. Workers who don’t comply face consequences. Some will quit for more flexible companies. Others will comply resentfully, doing the minimum required.
The dashboard solves Amazon’s coffee badging problem but creates new issues. It damages trust, makes work feel transactional, and turns managers into hall monitors. Amazon could have focused on outcomes instead of presence, given teams flexibility to decide how they work best, or treated workers as professionals who care about results.
Instead, it chose surveillance. When you work at Amazon, the company tracks not just what you produce, but where you are and for how long, down to the hour.
