Accenture set to cut around 19,000 jobs

Accenture’s chief financial officer has announced plans to cut around 19,000 jobs as the business looks to reduce costs for the future.

During a Q2 2023 earnings call last week (23 March 2023), KC McClure said the professional services company would spend $1.2bn (£991.7m) in severance to cut around 2.5% of its workforce.

”Over the next 18 months, these actions are expected to result in the departure of approximately 19,000 people,” an Accenture spokesperson told Insurance Times.

”While we continue to hire, especially to support our strategic growth priorities, during the second quarter of fiscal 2023, we initiated actions to streamline our operations and transform our non-billable corporate functions to reduce costs.”

McClure added: “These actions are expected to impact roughly 2.5% or 19,000 of our current workforce, of which over half are non-billable corporate functions and include over 800 of our more than 10,000 leaders across our markets and services.”

Lower outlook

Meanwhile, Accenture will spend $300m (£247.9m) on the consolidation of office space.

Accenture has also lowered its revenue growth outlook for the current fiscal year to between 8% and 10% – this was down from the previous estimate of 8% to 11%.

Despite this, McClure said she was pleased with Accenture’s overall results in Q2, which saw them post a revenue of $15bn (£12.4bn) and record bookings of $22.1bn (£18.26bn)

”I’m very pleased that our results demonstrate once again that our strategy to be the execution partner of choice for transformation lead in the five forces and have a diverse business across markets, industries and services continues to allow us to lead and take market share,” she added.

“In a world in which all strategies lead to technology, we have distinguished ourselves and our impact in the market.”

• Insurance Times has converted dollar amounts into pounds using an exchange rate of $1.21 = £1, which was correct as of 1 March 2023.