Salesforce puts health at the heart of hybrid working

Customer relationship management organisation Salesforce employs 75,000 people globally including several thousand in the UK and Ireland across a variety of customer-facing and global shared-services roles.

Looking after all aspects of their health has always been important. Terri Moloney, senior director, employee success, at Salesforce, says: “We have a very diverse workforce so we’re always looking at the data to make sure we understand what they might need.

“We also look to provide as much variety as possible in our health and wellbeing benefits. As examples, our wellbeing reimbursement programme gives employees £100/€100/$100 a month to spend on anything health-related and they all get a wellbeing day off every month to focus on their health.”

Understanding what health issues were affecting employees became even more important when the first lockdown was announced and everyone shifted to home working.

To check how employees were feeling, the organisation introduced internal surveys, initially running these once a week.

This exercise identified two key health issues: family care and isolation, so the organisation introduced special leave for employees with family care commitments and increased the support available for those who felt isolated.

During this time, Moloney also made sure that employees felt able to look after their physical health.

“Employee health screening, whereby employees could get a full-body check-up facilitated by our healthcare providers continued during the pandemic but we also made sure that employees felt they could take a break during the day to go out for a run or walk,” she says.

“Our leaders advocated this too, letting everyone know when they were going out for a walk so it became acceptable.”

As well as letting employees do their own thing, Salesforce rolled out online fitness classes globally. “Our employees were also amazing on a local level,” says Moloney. “If someone was a Pilates instructor in their spare time, they stepped forward to run online classes for their colleagues.”

Now that hybrid working is in place, the importance of physical health remains just as strong, albeit with more of a social angle. “We have groups for everything from walking and cycling to running and sea swimming,” says Moloney. “It’s a great way to build relationships, be active and have some fun.”