But staff threaten to quit
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One employee called the approach “chivvying”
Accenture has begun linking senior promotions to AI uptake, in a move seemingly designed to push reluctant staff to embrace the technology.
According to an internal email seen by the Financial Times, the Dublin-headquartered consultancy has informed senior managers that advancement will depend on consistent use of its AI tools.
Earlier this month, the New York-listed company began tracking individual weekly log-ins to selected AI platforms used by senior staff.
The email said engagement with the company’s core AI tools would be a visible input to talent reviews ahead of this summer’s leadership promotion decisions.
The tools being monitored include AI Refinery, designed to help clients turn raw AI systems into business applications, and SynOps, which the company describes as a human-machine operating engine to optimise data and digital processes.
Accenture employs roughly 780,000 people worldwide.
Some staff are exempt from the new promotion criteria, including employees in 12 European countries and those working on US federal government contracts.
A spokesperson for Accenture confirmed the policy, telling CNBC that the company’s strategy was to position itself as the “reinvention partner of choice” for clients and to become the most client-focused, AI-enabled workplace possible.
“That requires the adoption of the latest tools and technologies to serve our clients most effectively,” he added, confirming the existence of the internal communication.
The move highlights the challenges firms face in persuading staff to integrate AI into their daily work.
Executives at several Big Four accounting and consulting firms told the Financial Times that persuading partners and senior managers to adopt AI tools has been more challenging than with junior colleagues.
One described the process as “chivvying”, while another characterised the approach as a “carrot and stick”.
One person familiar with the policy, but not directly affected by it, said they would “quit immediately” if it applied to them.
Two people criticised the usefulness of the tools, describing some as “broken slop generators” – a reference to AI systems that can produce large volumes of low-quality output.
Older and more senior figures are often more attached to established working methods and less comfortable experimenting with new technology, they said.
The tougher stance on AI adoption comes amid a broader restructuring at Accenture announced in September.
At the time, the company warned that employees who were unable to develop new AI-related skills could eventually be made redundant.
Speaking on an earnings call, chief executive Julie Sweet said staff across the organisation would be required to “retrain and retool” on a large scale. She added that where reskilling was not feasible, the firm would look to part ways with some employees in order to recruit people with the capabilities it needs.
“Our No. 1 strategy is upskilling, given the skills we need,” she said, adding that early investment in AI was “really paying off”.
In earlier remarks to CNBC, Sweet said senior leaders across industries recognised that advanced AI would be central to future growth, but many organisations remained unprepared to deploy it effectively.
Accenture has widened its network of partnerships as it seeks to speed up the internal rollout of AI tools. In December, it agreed a deal with OpenAI to roll out ChatGPT Enterprise to tens of thousands of staff.
The company has also partnered up with Anthropic to train 30,000 employees on its Claude systems.
More recently, the firm acquired London-based start-up Faculty in a bid to boost its capacity to help clients “reinvent core and critical business processes” through AI.
Computing says:
If you have to bully people into using your AI systems then either your training is bad, or your tools are.
AI adoption depends on total transparency: explain what the products do and why staff should be using them over their current ways of working. And then, explain how they can do so. Far too many companies skip this important step, or gloss over it.
British American Tobacco mandates a full day (half day at the C-level) of dedicated AI training for all staff before they can even access the tools, and the success rate shows; CIO Javed Iqbal told me recently that staff couldn’t stop talking about the agents they’d built at the end of the training, and uptake is among the highest of any company we’ve talked to recently – Tom.
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