The 7.5 lakh employees of Accenture worldwide can now expect promotions in the month of June instead of December. The promotions have been delayed by six months because the company feels June is the time it is able to get a fair idea of its clients’ expectations, demands and plans.
Employees got to know of this change in the promotions schedule via an internal blog recently, while the managing directors were already informed of the same earlier.
The move can be attributed to the fact that the professional-services sector has been facing a lot of uncertainty with most clients looking to cut down on expenses.
The company had hired excessively during the pandemic when the demand had gone up. However, it had to resort to job cuts within a year and a half.
This delay in promotions only proves that the slump being experienced in the consultancy space is expected to continue for a while.
In June of 2023, post announcing 19,000 layoffs, that is, about 2.5 per cent of its strength in March, Accenture revealed its intentions to expand its artificial intelligence (AI) team. The tech giant had expressed the desire to expand its workforce to 80,000 employees which was almost double of its AI team strength at the time.
The decision to expand had come just months after the layoff round in March 2023. The decision impacted its employees associated with the non-billable corporate functions such as human resources, finance and legal.