Salesforce built its company culture around Ohana, the Hawaiian word for family. On January 4, 2023, CEO Marc Benioff emailed staff that the company would “reduce our workforce by about 10 percent.” The email used the phrase “As one ‘Ohana.” Of the employees who would lose their jobs, it said: “They’re friends. They’re family.”
At an all-hands meeting soon afterward, an employee asked on Slack: “should we consider retiring the phrase ‘Ohana?'”