Salesforce is telling some members of its sales team to return to the office, according to three insiders — an apparent reversal from CEO Marc Benioff's previous comments that such mandates were "never going to work."
The order only affects salespeople who currently live near an office "for now," one of the people said. Two people who work in engineering told Insider that they are unaware of any back-to-office mandates. A salesperson briefed about the plans said some teams will have to go back to the office every day, and some for just part of the week.
A Salesforce spokesperson says that its workforce is hybrid, meaning people both use the office and work from home. "We have a hybrid work environment that empowers leaders and teams to work together with purpose. They can decide when and where they come together to collaborate, innovate, and drive customer success," the spokesperson said.
Benioff has previously slammed return-to-work orders. At Salesforce's World Tour event in June, he stated that "office mandates are never going to work." And despite the company's massive office towers in San Francisco and New York and its future plans for more towers in Chicago, Sydney, Dublin, and Tokyo, Benioff has also previously expressed indifference about how much employees actually work in them.
Salesforce's return-to-office order comes less than two weeks after the company confirmed job cuts largely impacting its sales teams amid waning, post-pandemic demand for enterprise cloud software in an uncertain economic environment.
One employee who was laid off said they were told the company cut salespeople who hadn't closed a significant deal in six quarters — and that hundreds of people were affected, Insider reporter. Sources also previously told Insider that the company set up its own salesforce for failure ahead of layoffs by using a quota system that penalized top performers with unrealistic goals and difficult accounts.
In August, Salesforce trimmed its annual revenue guidance to roughly $30 billion in sales, down from the roughly $31 billion it projected in May, hurting its stock price which has yet to fully recover. Salesforce is known for its history of regularly upgrading guidance.
Two Salesforce insiders speculated that a return-to-work order won't fix Salesforce's slipping revenue projections. "The popular assessment is that work-from-home isn't the problem," one person said.
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