By
Chimamanda U. Martha
February 13th, 2024
According to CEO, the company needs to employ “thousands” of people to maintain its growth potential and margins.
Cloud-based software firm, Salesforce, is planning to boost its employee numbers by hiring 3,300 specialists. Chief Executive Marc Benioff revealed this while speaking to Bloomberg at the company’s annual Dreamforce conference.
The announcement follows the company’s decision to lay off 10% of its employees in January. Amid an effort to increase profits, Salesforce cut about 8,000 jobs. Another 50 sales and customer success employee lost their jobs in August.
At the time, the company defended the job cuts, citing it hired too many people during the pandemic. The newly opened positions will restore 40% of the employees that were slashed in January.
According to Chief Operating Officer Brian Millham, the new hires will be split among sales, engineering, and cloud departments. Millham noted that those were the most successful parts of the business at the time.
Benioff Thanks Former Employees for Returning
Meanwhile, as part of its turnaround efforts, Salesforce has been inviting former staff back. In August, Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff took time to thank all former Salesforce employees who returned to work at the company.
“A lot of these results have to do with not only our incredible employees that we’ve had in place, but a lot of folks who have really felt the desire to come back and help us,” said Benioff.
According to Benioff, the company needs to employ “thousands” of people to maintain its growth potential and margins. Many of these hires, he shared, will be “boomerangs”, or former Salesforce employees who had left for other companies.
Salesforce Reviews Prices, Launches New Product
While tech spending is down, Salesforce has had to look inwards to maintain its margins. For the first time in seven years, the company reviewed its prices upwards this year.
More recently, Salesforce rolled out a suite of artificial intelligence features. The software maker launched a generative AI tool, called Einstein Copilot, which is built into every Salesforce application. From Slack to Tableau, these generative AI tools can be tailored to any company’s needs.
By leveraging on the AI hype, Salesforce hopes to drive a new cycle of tech investment, particularly in its data cloud product. Investors seem to agree with the approach as shares are up 65% year to date by Thursday’s close.