When the company tried to get employees to return to in-person work last year, Salesforce and CEO Marc Benioff criticized the idea of an office mandate. Benioff insisted in June that “the mandate of the office is not going to work.” And in September, company leader Brent Hyder wrote in a company blog post that “at Salesforce, we have never had an office mandate, and never will.”
But when it comes to challenges for Salesforce, Benioff has changed his tune about remote work — at least when it comes to productivity.
“For new employees coming in, we know empirically that they do better if they’re in the office, meeting people, being trained, being trained,” Benioff said in an interview with On With Kara Swisher podcast, recorded during Summit Upfront last week and released on Friday. “If he was at home and didn’t go through the process, we don’t think he was successful.”
Benioff suggests that Salesforce requires different hours in the office for different departments. Engineers only have to come in 10 days a quarter, but administrative employees have to come three days a week. Sales and marketing staff—when not on sales calls—must be in the office four days a week.
But Benioff refused to call the new structure a mandate to return to office. “I don’t want to force anyone,” he said, warning that pushing the issue too hard would result in an outflow of talent. “We don’t want to lose our star.”
However, Benioff wants Salesforce to give people a “reason” to return to the office, and says employees are still free to ask managers to classify them as remote. But Benioff suggested that Salesforce will always need some people doing personal work, saying that “in some cases, people need to be in the office.”
Salesforce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Salesforce’s CEO previously hinted that some roles at the company would be brought back to the office. In a December call with analysts, Benioff said some roles at the company are “factory jobs — people who have to be here.” That same month, he also told employees on the company’s #all-salesforce Slack channel that workers hired during the pandemic had “lower productivity.”
Is remote work less productive?
Some company leaders say telecommuting is hurting productivity and company culture. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink suggested last September that bringing workers back to the office would increase overall labor productivity, and thus help reduce inflation. In January, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz complained that the company’s in-house employees were losing “the art of collaboration” and “the connection to a shared, larger mission.”
Opinions differ on how remote work affects productivity. Surveys of workers show that they are more productive when they work from home, while executives are less convinced that remote workers are as productive as in-person workers.
Salesforce is trying to cut costs after slower growth and activist investors are demanding changes at the company. The company is cutting thousands of employees, as well as cutting costs between $3 billion and $5 billion. It also dissolved its mergers and acquisitions committee, ending multibillion-dollar acquisitions, like the $27.7 billion purchase of Slack in 2021.
Cost cutting seems to be working, at least for now. Salesforce reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.68 for the quarter ended Jan. 31, beating expectations of $1.36 per share. The company also gave a better-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter.
On Monday, Benioff joked about the various activist investors challenging Salesforce. “I really need a CRM system just to keep track of everything,” he said.
Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter that examines what leaders need to succeed. Log in here.