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Global consulting giant Accenture is planning to cut staff who it is unable to train to use AI, starting with roughly 12,000 staff members over the last three months.
Editor’s note: This story first appeared on HR Leader’s sister brand, Cyber Daily.
During Accenture’s Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2025 Conference Call, last Thursday (25 September), the firm announced its strategy moving forward, with mention of AI, talent, and upskilling.
Accenture chief executive Julie Sweet, focused on the firm’s “three-pronged talent strategy”, which involves its “primary strategy” of upskilling its advisers in AI. The other two prongs of its strategy included firing advisers who cannot keep up with the demands of upskilling and deploying AI to “[drive] more efficiencies … to create more investment capacity”.
“We are exiting on a compressed timeline, people, where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need,” Sweet said.
The “exiting” of people on a “compressed timeline” shares links to the firm’s reduction of its global workforce from 791,000 to 779,000 in the last three months.
“There is so much demand, and the technology is moving faster. So the more advanced skills and the new types of skills are coming faster. And that’s why we’re being very decisive,” Sweet said.
Leaders in AI
Sweet stressed the integration of AI into “everything [they] do”.
Accenture highlighted that 60 per cent of its revenue comes from work that it does with its top 10 ecosystem partners, who are “the world’s largest technology companies by revenue … look[ing] for help to turn their technology into business outcomes and scale the adoption of AI”.
Sweet said: “When we can save [clients] money by delivering our services with advanced AI, that frees up their budget to do the next things on their list, and that’s what they’re doing.”
“We … are working with companies far along their journey to be AI-ready and wanting to be the first to change the game with AI, even as its potential is still emerging.”
She added: “As we look at the market, we have not seen any meaningful change, positive or negative, in the overall market. We are focused on delivering results regardless of the market conditions by being the most relevant to our clients, and relevance today requires leadership in AI.”
She noted that the market has not seen any “meaningful change, positive or negative in the overall market”, so the firm is focused on being a leader in AI despite this stagnation.
Speaking about the AI adoption trends in the market, she said: “As reported widely, value realisation has been underwhelming for many, and enterprise adoption at scale is slow, other than with digital natives. This is why our clients are turning to us.”
Business optimisation program
Sweet stressed, upskilling is fundamental to the firm’s talent strategy, and she re-emphasised: “In a very compressed timeline, where we don’t have a viable path for skilling … exiting people so we can get more of the skills in [sic] we need.”
This displacement of staff is part of the firm’s “business optimisation program”.
Accenture chief financial officer Angie Park said: “The business optimisation program has two parts. One related to rapid talent rotation that Julie mentioned, which reflects severance associated with headcount reductions that we are making in a compressed timeline, and second, related to the divestiture of two acquisitions that are no longer aligned with our strategic priorities. These actions will result in cost savings, which will be reinvested in our people and our business.”
“We expect savings of over [US]$1 billion from our business optimisation program, which we expect that we will reinvest in our business and in our people because it’s so important for our future growth.”
The company has already upskilled 550,000 of its advisers on generative AI fundamentals and has grown its AI and data professionals team from 44,000 in FY2022–23 to 77,000.
Despite the expedited “exiting” of 12,000 staff, Sweet said: “In FY26, we expect to increase our headcount overall across our three markets, including in the US and Europe.”
“Our results reflect our relentless focus to consistently deliver on our shareholder value proposition while investing for long-term market leadership and reinforce our role as a trusted reinvention partner for our clients and a leader in AI.”
