Heavy Impact of COVID-19: Accenture to layoff 25,000 Employees! - Details

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, global professional services company Accenture has announced to cut at least 5 percent of its low-performing workforce. In this big cut, thousands of Indian employees are set to lose jobs owing to the slow business that the company is witnessing currently.  

According to a report in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) an internal staff meeting by Accenture CEO Julie Sweet in mid-August states the same. While speaking to news agency IANS Accenture said that the company is not planning extraordinary global workforce actions at this time. 

"Every year, as part of our performance process, we have conversations with our people about how they are performing, areas for improvement, their potential to progress, and whether they are a long term fit for Accenture. This year, across all parts of our business and all career levels, we will identify approximately 5 percent of our people as our lowest performers, and these individuals will transition out of Accenture. This is consistent with our actions each year," the company informed.

Looking into employees in India, Accenture has the largest employee base of nearly 2 lakh. With this big move, thousands of workers are being affected by it. 

Further in the AFR report Accenture CEO Sweet stated that "In a normal year, we transition out about 5 percent and we hire to replace them, because we are in a demand scenario. Right now, we're not in a demand scenario, so if we manage out the same percentage of people and don't replace them, it allows us to continue to invest and preserve some people who have lower chargeability for when the market comes back."

"This year, in addition to the normal 5 percent, we've identified more people who need improvement ... So we're making sure ... if we have to make other actions, we know where our performance is," she further claimed in the global staff meeting.

Giving an insight over the situation and plan for Indian employees, Accenture said that In India, "we continue to hire, and as part of our ongoing compensation programs, we also recently recognized a number of our people with bonuses and promotions". 

Meanwhile in the meeting, Sweet faced questions from staff about changed internal performance assessments. However, the report also read as "despite cutting subcontractors and halting fresh recruitment, the company still needed to reduce numbers. We finished our second quarter at the end of February and we were growing 8 percent. We were having an incredible year."

Till date, Accenture has 5,09,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries and due to the pandemic, the growth had collapsed to 1.3 percent.