Accenture to cut 19K jobs
DUBLIN, IRELAND — Professional services company Accenture will lay off 19,000 employees, or 2.5% of its workforce, over the next 18 months as part of its cost-cutting efforts.
In a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the firm said they expect to incur US$1.5 billion in costs due to the downsizing, including US$1.2 billion directly related to the layoffs.
About half of the jobs that will be lost are in administrative or support functions.
“While we continue to hire, especially to support our strategic growth priorities… we initiated actions to streamline our operations,” the company said in a release.
Meanwhile, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said during an earnings call that the firm is going after structural costs to ensure they are in a better position amid a challenging economic environment.
“We’ve been dealing with the difficult challenges of compounding wage inflation, and we’ve been doing that with pricing, but we’ve also been doing that with cost efficiencies and digitizing,” Sweet said.
The firm also expects to incur $300 million while consolidating some of its office space.
Accenture is a world leader in technology, consulting, and outsourcing. Its industry expertise helped the firm land the #1 spot in the Time Doctor OA500, the first objective index of the world’s top 500 outsourcing companies.
