Microsoft: voluntary redundancy scheme for a quarter of its workforce, affecting up to 60,000 people

Microsoft has drawn up an incentive scheme for the early voluntary redundancy of up to around 60,000 employees in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom. The Redmond-based group is stepping up investment in data centres to meet the high demand linked to artificial intelligence, providing cloud services to companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and many others, whilst at the same time putting pressure on the group’s finances. Back in April, the company had already announced an initial voluntary retirement scheme, which was open to around 7 per cent of its employees in the United States.

The voluntary redundancy scheme covers around a quarter of Microsoft’s workforce, with the aim of reducing costs and freeing up more resources for AI. According to a company spokesperson, the offer will be extended to staff in specific teams in the US, Canada, India and the UK at a seniority level equal to or below that of vice-president. Certain groups of employees are excluded, including those working in data centres, sales and marketing.

“The voluntary redundancy scheme reflects an important aspect of how our approach to change has evolved: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, offering employees more opportunities to shape their own future path,” wrote Amy Coleman, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Microsoft, in a note to staff. “The initiative builds on what we learnt earlier this year through the voluntary retirement programme.”

In the second quarter, Microsoft’s main competitors in the cloud sector, Alphabet and Amazon, reported negative free cash flow, whilst Microsoft managed to keep its free cash flow in positive territory. According to sources cited by the US media, some teams in marketing, sales and engineering have decided not to join the programme.