Target orders 150 remote employees to relocate to Minneapolis headquarters

About 150 remote Target employees now face a hard choice: relocate to the company’s Minneapolis headquarters with relocation help or leave with severance. The move hits two teams inside Target’s merchandising organization and turns a work-from-anywhere arrangement into a decision about uprooting families, changing commutes and deciding whether the job is still worth the cost of a Twin Cities move.

Target said the change was meant to increase in-person collaboration, unlock creativity and help the company move faster. The retailer also framed the shift as a way to strengthen its “merchandising authority,” a signal that leadership wants its buying and product teams closer to the center of decision-making as it tries to sharpen execution.

The relocation push came as Target kept pressing ahead with a broader turnaround effort after years of sluggish sales. In March, new chief merchandising officer Cara Sylvester told investors the company wanted to make Target the “most delightful experience in retail,” and acknowledged that performance over the last few years had not met expectations. The latest relocation order fits that message less as a one-off staffing change than as another step in tightening how core functions operate.

Target has stopped short of imposing a single companywide return-to-office mandate. Instead, it has left office expectations to individual teams, even as more groups have been pulled back into downtown Minneapolis. Some teams started returning in June 2025, and Target’s commercial unit began requiring employees to be in the office three days a week in September 2025. Bring Me The News reported that merchandising workers were also called into the company’s downtown Minneapolis offices on a three-day schedule.

The scale of the headquarters workforce matters beyond Target’s internal culture. A June 2025 report put about 7,100 employees at Target’s downtown Minneapolis hub, making the company one of the city’s largest employers and a major driver of daytime activity. That footprint has made every new office requirement a closely watched signal for downtown businesses, transit patterns and the office market around Target headquarters.

For the 150 workers directly affected, the message was more immediate. Target is asking them to move to the Twin Cities or accept severance, making this one of the clearest signs yet that the company is narrowing the space for remote work inside a core business function as it tries to revive growth.