According to Business Insider, Amazon has rolled out a powerful new dashboard for managers that tracks not just whether corporate employees badge into the office, but exactly how many hours they spend there. The tool, which began rolling out in December and refreshes daily at 5 p.m. PT, monitors attendance over a rolling eight-week period. It specifically flags three categories: “Low-Time Badgers” (median time under four hours per day), “Zero Badgers,” and “Unassigned Building Badgers.” This marks an escalation from Amazon’s stringent 2023 mandate requiring most employees in-office five days a week, and follows a 2024 crackdown on “coffee badging.” An Amazon spokesperson stated the dashboard is a tool to help managers identify who may need support, and that expectations for in-office work haven’t changed.
The Surveillance Escalation
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just about counting badge swipes anymore. It’s about measuring median hours. That’s a huge shift. Before, you could maybe badge in, grab a coffee, and leave—the old “coffee badging” trick. Now, the system is calculating your median daily time over two months. Falling below four hours a day on average gets you flagged as a “Low-Time Badger.” It turns a binary “were you here?” into a nuanced “were you here *enough*?” And that’s a much heavier lever for enforcement. It basically formalizes the suspicion that someone might be gaming the system and gives managers a quantifiable, HR-sanctioned reason to have “a conversation.” The company says managers should “apply judgment,” but let’s be real: when a metric is handed down from above, it becomes a target.
The Manager Tool, Or Weapon?
Amazon frames this as a consistency tool. Previously, managers had to request this data from HR; now they have on-demand, direct access. The spokesperson said most of the data was already available, they just made it more consistent. But that consistency is the whole game. Standardizing these metrics across the entire corporate workforce means there’s no more ambiguity or manager-by-manager discretion. The expectation is now embedded in software. Is this a tool for managers to provide support, as Amazon claims? Or is it a compliance weapon that pressures managers to pressure their teams? It’s probably both. And in a company known for its data-driven, sometimes brutal performance culture, which use case do you think will dominate?
The Broader RTO Crackdown Trend
Amazon is far from alone in this. The article mentions Samsung, Dell, Bank of America, and JPMorgan all using similar badge-swipe surveillance to enforce hybrid policies. Dell even ties it to performance reviews and compensation. So this is a clear industry-wide pattern. Companies invested billions in real estate, and many leaders genuinely believe in “collaboration magic” that only happens in person. They’re now using the one unambiguous data point they have—badge swipes—to mandate it. But there’s a massive irony here. Amazon’s own internal document says in-office work is “about more than just being physically present” and that managers should promote “meaningful collaboration” rather than just “remotely monitoring badge swipes.” Yet, they’ve built a perfect system for… remotely monitoring badge swipes. The message and the medium are in complete conflict.
The Culture Shift And What’s Next
This move fundamentally changes the employer-employee contract for white-collar work at Amazon. It shifts trust from output and deliverables to physical presence and hours logged. An employee last year compared the “coffee badging” crackdown to being treated “like high school students.” This new dashboard is the hall monitor’s dream. The real question is what happens next. Does this actually improve collaboration or innovation? Or does it just create a new layer of anxiety and theater, where people come in to hit their four-hour median but work with headphones on, scheduling virtual meetings with the colleague at the next desk? For companies that rely on complex hardware and logistics, like those sourcing industrial panel PCs for manufacturing floors, in-person work on the actual factory floor is non-negotiable. But for corporate roles? The benefits are far murkier. Amazon is betting big on surveillance to get the office culture it wants. I’m skeptical it will work.
