Accenture Delays Promotions After Lowered Outlook

The solution provider behemoth, which this year lowered its fiscal outlook twice, has decided to delay its annual large-scale staff promotions from December to June, and to make that schedule change permanent.

Global solution provider Accenture is delaying the annual promotion of its staff members from December of this year until June of next year.

The news, first reported by Bloomberg, comes after the Dublin-based services company earlier this year reduced its outlook for 2024.

Bloomberg Tuesday reported that Accenture, ranked No. 1 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500, informed its employees of the change in an internal blog post.

[Related: Accenture CEO Julie Sweet On Layoffs, Belt-Tightening, And Going After ‘Structural Costs’]

An Accenture spokesperson confirmed the change in an emailed response to a CRN request for more information and said that the company is permanently changing its primary promotion data from December to June going forward.

“We are permanently changing our primary promotion date from December to June, which is when we have better visibility of our clients’ planning and demand,” the spokesperson wrote.

However, the spokesperson declined to provide additional information.

Fiscal 2024 has been challenging for Accenture. The company in late June reported that for its third fiscal quarter 2024, which ended May 31, its revenue decreased year-over-year by 1 percent to $16.5 billion while GAAP earnings decreased 3 percent to $3.04 per share.

At the time, Accenture said it expected full fiscal year 2024 revenue growth of 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent, after saying in the second fiscal quarter it expected growth of 3 percent. That second fiscal quarter itself was lower than the company’s earlier forecast of 5 percent growth in full-year revenue.

Accenture until last year had been on a hiring spree, fueled in part by being a leader in the number of acquisitions of other IT services firms. The company between 2022 and 2023 increased its headcount by 39,000 to 738,000 employees thanks in large part to 25 acquisitions. However, Accenture in March 2023 unveiled plans to lay off about 19,000 employees, or about 2.5 percent of its total workforce, in the following 18 months.