Moving up the career ladder at Accenture comes with a requirement: You must be using the company’s AI tools.
In a recent episode of the “Rapid Response” podcast, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said AI proficiency is a mandatory part of working at the consultancy and moving up its ranks. The company announced in September it has invested more than $865 million in a “six-month business optimization program,” including reskilling thousands of employees—and showing the door to those who refused to adapt to using evolving workplace technology.
“If you want to get promoted, you’ve got to do the things that we do in order to operate Accenture,” Sweet said.
“These are the new tools to operate a company,” she added. “We didn’t go from zero to ‘you won’t get promoted’ in a month. It’s over a three-year period of getting used to the technology, making sure it’s user-friendly, making sure we have the right workbench for people to use, and then saying, ‘Hey, this is Accenture and how we operate.’”
The mass reskilling effort is part of Accenture’s three-year, $3 billion push to integrate AI first announced in 2023. One goal of the effort was to double the company’s AI talent to 80,000 professionals through hiring, acquisitions, and training. Accenture has more than 770,000 employees.
