COVID Reopening: 100 Employees Return To Salesforce Tower As Company Gradually Opens Offices
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – A group of Salesforce employees were welcomed back to the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco on Monday, as the company continues its gradual reopening of workplaces.
According to a company statement, the first group back to the company's headquarters since the start of the pandemic are 100 fully vaccinated employees who volunteered to return.
Salesforce Tower, along with its offices in Irvine, are the company's first U.S. offices to reopen. The company has already opened about two dozen offices abroad.
Returning employees will notice redesigned lobbies, elevators and conference rooms and additional spaces for workers to connect and collaborate, the company said.
Salesforce seeks to reopen its U.S. offices by first offering fully vaccinated employees the voluntary opportunity to join cohorts of 100 people or less. In this phase, workers must follow COVID safety protocols and are required to undergo COVID-19 testing twice a week.
The company seeks to gradually open offices from 20% capacity to 75% capacity depending on data and local guidance. Offices would be allowed to be fully reopen when employee case rates and positivity rates are consistently at a very low level.
Salesforce has previously said that workers would continue to have the option to work from home through at least the end of 2021.
While the company's U.S. offices are reopening, the company has said the office environment would be different compared to before the pandemic. In February, Salesforce president and chief people officer Brent Hyder declared "the 9-to-5 workday is dead."
In his statement, Hyder said that most of the company's 50,000 employees would be working under what the company called a "Flex" option, where they would be at the office 1-3 days a week. Others would be allowed to work remotely full time.
Hyder said roles that require physically being at the office would still be at offices 4 to 5 days a week, but said that consists of "the smallest population of our workforce."