Salesforce has reportedly instituted a “four-to-five days a week” Return To Office (RTO) mandate for some employees.

In an update of its RTO policy, which previously empowered leaders to make “decisions for their teams about how and where they work”, Salesforce is allegedly mandating many of its employees to return to the office.

The San Francisco Standard reported that Salesforce employees received an internal email announcing the shift from remote to in-office and hybrid working will begin this autumn, on October 1.

A Salesforce spokesperson told KRON4:

Salesforce is a place where connection and relationships drive success. We believe being together in person deepens relationships, sparks innovation, fosters learning, and strengthens culture — ultimately, resulting in better business outcomes.”

More Specifics On The New Mandate

Salesforce will have three hybrid work policies assigned to different departments within the business: “remote”, where employees work primarily from home; “Office-Flex”, where they work in-office three days a week; and “Office-based”, where they work in-office four to five days a week.

The memo reported that the sales, workplace services, and data centre engineering departments, as well as the onsite support technicians reporting to the Chief Information Officer, will be mandated to work from the office four to five days a week starting from October 1.

The remaining departments, including marketing, legal, and product teams, will be “office-flex” moving forward. Other engineering roles also fall under this category, with the stipulation of at least ten office days each quarter.

Full remote work will be an exception rather than the norm, granted only under specific circumstances, such as working from a client’s site. The new guidelines specify that such exemptions will be rare, with one example being engineers dedicated to Salesforce’s Heroku platform.

Salesforce will also introduce an internal dashboard next month to encourage in-person attendance. The dashboard will track data from employee badge scans within the US. The business emphasises that employees will have “full visibility” of their attendance data. The initiative intends to align employee attendance with quarterly team goals. Additionally, the dashboard will monitor employees’ average voluntary time off, including time allocated for community service efforts.

“We have always had a hybrid approach, which provides flexibility to meet the evolving needs of the business and helps attract and retain world-class, diverse talent,” the Salesforce spokesperson added. “Our hybrid work guidelines focus on in-person connection while recognising the value of work away from the office.”

The software company’s headquarters is on Mission Street, within the Salesforce Tower, in the heart of San Francisco, making it the city’s largest employer. However, the new policy applies to Salesforce workers worldwide.

The same week that Salesforce established these new in-person work expectations, the company also announced a fresh round of layoffs affecting 300 employees. This compounded the 700 workers laid off earlier this year and the 7,000 roles terminated at the beginning of 2023.

The RTO vs Remote Debate Coming To A Head In 2024

In 2022, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said, “Office mandates are never going to work”. Naturally, that position has been backtracked, as illustrated by this new mandate. However, Salesforce isn’t the only tech giant grappling with what hybrid or RTO policy works best for them while supporting employees.

Last week, Amazon reportedly started tracking the hours corporate workers spend in the office. Business Insider said the move is to address the rise of “coffee badging”, the purported trend of employees badging into the office, getting coffee and then leaving shortly after to circumvent Amazon’s in-office three-days-a-week RTO mandate.

Meanwhile, in February, Dell imposed a company-wide RTO mandate requiring all employees to work onsite for at least 39 days a quarter.

The new hybrid work policy, which averages three days per week in the office, expanded on a return-to-office mandate introduced last year. This previous mandate required employees living within an hour of an office to be onsite at least three days a week.

In an echo of Salesforce’s u-turn on remote and hybrid working, this 2023 policy superseded Dell’s 2020 commitment during the pandemic, which promised that 60 percent of its workforce would only need to work on-premises once or twice weekly.

The Register also reported that a source close to the situation added that workers below a particular pay grade and level of seniority could choose to work fully remotely, but that decision could negatively impact their career opportunities at the tech giant.

Last year, KPMG’s CEO Outlook survey for 2023 highlighted that almost two-thirds of CEOs want to kill hybrid work within three years.

The survey, which included responses from 1,325 CEOs of businesses with revenues over $500 million, revealed that 64 percent of CEOs plan to return to a fully on-site working model within the next three years. Additionally, 87 percent of CEOs intend to achieve this goal by linking financial incentives and promotion opportunities to on-site attendance.



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