Accenture on March 23, 2023 announced that it will lay off close to 19,000 employees in the coming months. The company is yet to reveal the exact timeline of when the layoffs will begin and the departments that will be impacted. The company's HR has started preparing a list of employees that are expected to be laid off, reported India Today Tech, claiming sources.
The tech firm has a lot of employees who are not employees on any project and the HRs have started making a list of workers that have not been working on any project for some time. The report claimed that these employees will be the first to be fired.
Additionally, Accenture has already hinted that it has begun the layoff process in its SEC filing. The company said that it has initiated actions to streamline operations and transform non-billable corporate functions to reduce costs in the second quarter of the financial year 2023.
Accenture also added that over the next one and a half year close to 19,000 employees will be affected by the company's decision to streamline its operations. This will be about 2.5 per cent of Accenture's current workforce.
An important point to note here is that the company's 40 per cent workforce operates from India.
Accenture continues to hire
Interestingly, Accenture's career page and LinkedIn page clearly indicated that the company is still hiring people. The jobs that the company is currently hiring for include Microsoft 365 Integration Engineer, Salesforce Technical Architecture Application Developer, Italian Application Developer, Windows Scripting Applications Support Engineer and more.
Accenture Career page screenshot | Accenture
The company has been posting close to 500 vacant job posts on the official website, claimed the report by India Today Tech. But there is no clarity if the company is hiring new people to fill roles or is it just focusing on some important roles. But, this is not surprising as the company had earlier confirmed that it will continue to hire and support their strategic growth priorities. What is interesting is that the company has the finance to support the hiring of new staff but not to retain the ones currently working in the company.
Why is Accenture firing employees?
Accenture like all other companies is firing due to economic downturns, cost saving and over hiring. The company had hired employees to meet the project demands but with the economy taking a downturn the company is struggling to maintain a budget to achieve its goals.
The company in the SEC filing had said, "Our results of operations are affected by economic conditions, including macroeconomic conditions, including macroeconomic conditions, the overall inflationary environment and level of business confidence. There continues to be significant economic and geopolitical uncertainty in many markets around the world, which has impacted and may continue to impact our business, particularly with regard to wage and inflation volatility in foreign currency exchange rates," it added.
