Salesforce has announced that most of its employees will be able to permanently work from home two or more days a week, a move that could greatly impact the Bay Area’s shift back to pre-pandemic work culture.
The cloud software giant made the announcement Tuesday in a blog post titled "Creating a Best Workplace from Anywhere, for Everyone," which declared "the 9-to-5 workday is dead; and the employee experience is about more than ping-pong tables and snacks."
The company is San Francisco’s largest private employer with an estimated 9,000 people staffed in the city.
"We learned that nearly half of our employees want to come in only a few times per month, but also that 80 percent of employees want to maintain a connection to a physical space," the post said. While most employees will be in the office one to three days per week, a small percentage not near a physical office location will go fully remote and the "smallest population" of Salesforce employees will work in the office four to five days per week if they’re in a role that requires them to do so.
In-office spaces will transition away from "a sea of desks," and be replaced with breakout spaces and community hubs, according to the company.
"This isn’t just the future of work, this is the next evolution of our culture," the post added.
While many Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook have embraced the work-from-home lifestyle in the face of the ongoing coronavirus crisis, Salesforce is the first to embrace it as part of a permanent strategy.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported the company leases about two thirds of the huge Salesforce Tower. Salesforce also owns 50 Fremont St. and leases all of 350 Mission St. and 546 Howard St., an unbuilt tower a few blocks away.
The company recently announced a deal to buy Slack, which is also headquartered in San Francisco.
Related
