Redmond, 26 October. Microsoft is offering employees in some divisions in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom the chance to leave voluntarily with severance, chief people officer Amy Coleman told staff in a memo the company published on its official blog.
About 60,000 people, more than a quarter of the workforce, are eligible, according to Business Insider.
The programme is called the Voluntary Exit Offer. According to Coleman, it applies to employees "at level 70 and below" on Microsoft's internal job scale (which, Business Insider reports, includes some senior leaders), and only in divisions that have chosen to take part: "Some organizations are providing the Voluntary Exit Offer, and some are not. Participation varies based on each business's priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs." It is "a time-limited, voluntary program that gives those who are eligible the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources", the memo says; eligible staff will receive the terms by email.
Coleman describes the programme as giving employees who may be considering a future outside the company a way to make that transition now, with support, and giving divisions another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs. She says it builds on the Voluntary Retirement Program launched earlier this year. The memo does not mention spending on artificial intelligence: the link between the programme and Microsoft's heavy investment in AI infrastructure is drawn by Business Insider, which first reported the memo.
According to the publication, employees must decide by early December and leave by the end of the year; payments will follow the company's standard packages: under previous programmes US staff were guaranteed at least 60 days of base pay, and most could receive up to 39 weeks of pay depending on tenure and position. At the end of June Microsoft employed about 223,000 people.
"The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We'll learn from it," writes the chief people officer, and the sample size for this lesson is about 60,000 people.
What it means: For the first time Microsoft is offering voluntary departure not only by age and tenure, as in this year's earlier programme, but to a broad group of staff, with each division deciding whether to take part. How many will accept is unknown: 60,000 is the number eligible, not the number leaving.
Who benefits: Microsoft, which cuts staff costs without compulsory lay-offs; employees who were planning to leave anyway, who can receive up to 39 weeks' pay. For everyone else the offer means choosing between guaranteed severance and uncertainty if the programme does not deliver the cuts needed.
Background: The Voluntary Retirement Program Coleman mentions was open, according to Business Insider, to about 9,000 employees who met age and tenure criteria. Big companies increasingly choose this route: BMW, for example, offered staff up to 650,000 euros to leave.
