Even after the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago, many workplaces still retained the hybrid working week. Salesforce was no different, allowing employees to work from the office or from home.
However, the cloud giant has just issued an internal memo instructing most of its employees to return to their offices by October 1, 2024. What does this change mean?
The Facts
In a step back from its previous stance on hybrid working, Salesforce has now informed select groups of staff that they must comply with its new return-to-office (RTO) mandate. In an internal memo, the company stated that the policy will vary between teams, but that the central focus will be for most employees, even if they were working remotely before, to return to the office for either four or five days a week.
Effective from October 1, employees in select teams, such as sales, workplace services, data center engineering, and onsite support, will need to be in the office four to five times a week. In contrast, those in other departments will be required to work from the office at least three days a week.
Ditching the Hybrid Working Model
This particular announcement comes a couple of years after CEO Marc Benioff, in 2022, stated that “office mandates are never going to work”.
If recent similar instances are any indication, an RTO mandate in the tech industry has come with heavy employee resistance. At Dell, when the CEO did a similar U-turn about hybrid working, nearly half of the employees simply refused to show up, even after being told it would affect their progression at the company.
Similarly, Amazon employees have been circumventing its controversial RTO policy by visiting the office, scanning their badge and leaving the office just after a hot beverage (popularly known as ‘coffee badging’).
To tackle this, Amazon is mandating that teams stay multiple hours when they visit the office. The company even said that it would monitor the number of working hours with minimum expectations varying between four to six hours.
In the same breath, to ensure the expectations around the mandate have been met, Salesforce has told its employees that it will roll out an ‘internal dashboard’ in August, which will give employees “full visibility” over their attendance.
Summary
Salesforce’s step back from their previous hybrid working model indicates a push forward into a new age of digital working.
Whether this change will be well-accepted or improve aspects like productivity, sales, or engagement is unclear so far, but this is likely not the last we will hear on the matter.
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