Accenture is remaking its workforce for the AI era — and that means both layoffs and new hiring.
Executives said on a Thursday earnings call that the firm has been “exiting” employees it can’t retrain with artificial intelligence skills, while simultaneously planning to expand head count in the next fiscal year.
“Our No. 1 strategy is upskilling,” CEO Julie Sweet said on the call. But “we are exiting on a compressed timeline, people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need.”
Despite the cuts, Sweet said Accenture’s head count is expected to increase across all markets — including the US and Europe — in the coming financial year.
The firm employed more than 779,000 people at the end of August, Sweet said, down from about 791,000 three months earlier.
Accenture booked about $615 million in restructuring charges in the latest quarter, mostly tied to severance, said Angie Park, the chief financial officer, on the call. After an additional charge this quarter, the figure is expected to climb to about $865 million.
Alongside what the company calls “rapid talent rotation,” Park said Accenture will also divest two acquisitions.
“These actions will result in cost savings which will be reinvested in our people and our business,” Park said. She declined to give a figure when an analyst asked about the scale of hiring.
Accenture has been building up its AI bench, nearly doubling its ranks of AI and data specialists to 77,000 since fiscal 2023, Sweet said. The company has also trained over 550,000 employees in the fundamentals of generative AI.
“Advanced AI is becoming a part of everything we do,” Sweet said, adding that the firm sees AI not as “deflationary” but “expansionary.”
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Accenture reported $69.7 billion in revenue for fiscal 2025, up 7% from a year earlier. Its shares fell 2.7% on Thursday.
Accenture did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Talent rotation in the AI era
Accenture’s strategy underscores how companies are rotating talent for the age of AI: trimming workers whose skills don’t align with new needs, while expanding in areas like data, cloud, and AI consulting.
Big Tech has been following a similar playbook, firing thousands of workers and adding thousands more in priority areas. Microsoft has cut jobs this year, but CEO Satya Nadella said in July that the company’s overall head count is “relatively unchanged” thanks to new hiring.
Meta, meanwhile, laid off 5% of its staff earlier this year, targeting low performers. But the company also said it would backfill many of those roles. It undertook a summertime AI hiring spree.
Not every company has struck the right balance. Klarna, the buy-now-pay-later firm that talked up its AI plans, has reassigned staff after putting them into a “talent pool.” Engineers, marketers, and other employees have been told their jobs are no longer needed and moved into customer-support roles, Business Insider reported earlier this month.