Qantas to cut 850 corporate roles in Accenture outsourcing deal
- Qantas plans to cut 850 corporate roles under a multi-year Accenture partnership.
- Work will be delivered mostly by Accenture teams in India, some in Australia.
- Finance, procurement and marketing teams are affected first.
- The first changes are expected to be in place by mid-2027.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Qantas will cut 850 corporate positions as it moves work to Accenture under a new multi-year partnership, with most of the outsourced services to be delivered by Accenture’s teams in India. The first changes are expected to be in place by mid-2027.
The cuts start in Qantas’ finance, procurement and marketing teams, where some services will be outsourced to Accenture and delivered mostly in India and partly in Australia.
A legacy technology problem
Qantas Group chief executive Vanessa Hudson announced the cuts in an all-staff email, calling them “hard news for some,” ABC News reported on Nov. 10. She said Qantas would redeploy as many people as possible. The airline said hundreds of roles would go over the coming years.
“Like every airline, we run on technology built up over decades for a different era, including more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together,” Hudson said. She added that the partnership “will allow us to unlock innovation faster and accelerate our use of AI, with lasting benefits.”
Qantas was weighing an outsourcing move affecting about 1,000 jobs in India, as we reported in August.
Union vows to fight
The Australian Services Union (ASU) said most of the cuts affect jobs based in Sydney. Assistant national secretary Scott Cowen said the union had been working with Qantas for months after first hearing about the proposed deal.
“We were told at the time that there was no plan for 1,000 jobs to be offshored and yet today staff have been told by Vanessa Hudson that up to 850 jobs could be sent offshore,” Cowen said.
He said companies such as Qantas that have received taxpayer-funded subsidies have a social obligation to look after their workforce. Telstra announced a A$700 million (about US$481 million) joint venture with Accenture last year, and Coles is reported to have moved up to 1,000 jobs offshore after partnering with the firm, ABC News reported.
What it means for buyers
Qantas is the latest large Australian company to hand back-office functions to a global provider with Indian delivery. Its email names finance, procurement and marketing as the first wave, which leaves room for more functions later.
Companies weighing finance and accounting outsourcing or procurement outsourcing can compare providers on OA’s list of the top 50 IT service providers in India.
Related news
- NAB to cut up to 2,500 jobs; union says 180 go offshore · 28 Oct 2026
- Bendigo Bank cuts 140 jobs in outsourcing push · 23 Sep 2026
- BAT outsources 3,500 roles to Accenture in AI push · 2 Jul 2026
Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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