The impact on its Dublin workforce of Salesforce’s decision to cut global staff numbers by about 10 per cent will take a number of days to become clear but there is some hope in official circles that significantly fewer than the 250 or so jobs the headline figure suggests might be lost at the company’s Irish operation.
The company declined to comment on Wednesday on how many redundancies were being considered in Ireland and the Department of Enterprise said the Minister, Simon Coveney, had not received any collective redundancy notification in relation to potential redundancies at Salesforce, as is required under legislation in Ireland.
Salesforce, which has about 80,000 employees internationally, had said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday that it would make the staff cuts by the end of the 2024 fiscal year and would be making a number of property disposals up to 2026.
The cloud-based software company, which is under pressure from investors including activist investor Starboard Value to improve margins, is following the likes of Twitter, Meta and Stripe in seeking to cut costs.
In a letter to staff, the company’s chief executive, Marc Benioff, said too many staff had been hired during the pandemic and that “as our customers are taking a more measured approach to their purchasing decisions”, the environment “remains challenging”.
[ Tech giants ditch office space in Dublin and LondonOpens in new window ]
Mr Benioff had said in the letter that many of the affected employees would be notified within the “next hour and will receive a minimum of about five months of pay, health insurance, career resources, and other benefits” while those outside the US would receive similar packages “aligned with local employment laws”.
By Wednesday evening there were a number of posts on social media in the United States from staff who had been informed they had lost their jobs. The position regarding staff at the Irish offices remained unclear on Wednesday evening, however.
In response to inquiries from The Irish Times, the company referred only to the regulatory filing and a spokesperson for the department simply outlined the legal requirements in this jurisdiction, “that employers proposing a collective redundancy must notify the Minister of the proposed collective redundancy” and confirmed that this had not happened at this point.
Separately, however, there was some hope expressed informally in official circles that the percentage of jobs lost here would be below the international average as the company’s sales area might be expected to be disproportionately affected and that this was said not to be one of the larger sections in Dublin.
Salesforce has signed a 15-year lease for a new European headquarters overlooking the river Liffey at Spencer Place in Dublin. The company is due to occupy the premises in March.
