SEATTLE, Wash. — Microsoft is offering voluntary exit offers to about a quarter of its workforce. That’s roughly 60,000 of its employees.
“This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support. It also gives participating organizations another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs,” Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer Amy Coleman said in a memo sent to employees.
This offer will be available to eligible employees in participating teams in Canada, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at the vice president level and below.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the offer applies to all departments, except marketing, sales, and some engineering teams.
The spokesperson pushed back against calling it a buyout program, as they say it is a standard severance offer, as opposed to the added incentives apart of the voluntary retirement program that was announced earlier this year.
Coleman’s memo says this program is building on the early retirement package in an effort to “create greater flexibility.”
Dr. Joseph Philips, an economics professor at Seattle University, says it’s important to take this offer in context of the hiring trends of the company.
“Even if you run some numbers around the 60,000, and let’s say, 20% to 25% of them take up the offer, it still leaves you with an employment level that’s well above where they were in 2021,” Phillips said.
Phillips doesn’t believe the impact will be broadly felt on the company’s Redmond headquarters, as, he, and a Microsoft spokesperson confirm, that the headcount in those offices has stayed consistent during rounds of actual layoffs over the past two years.
“They’ve continued to hire people while they’re firing people. So, they’re reorganizing the organization standpoint in terms of what people do,” Phillips said.
In the early retirement offer, a Microsoft spokesperson says 30% of the 8,600 eligible employees took the offer. The spokesperson says the company does not expect anywhere close to that amount to take the voluntary exit offer, saying similar companies who have made similar initiatives saw closer to 5%-6% of employees leave.
“I’m sure they have a certain target of what they want to accomplish. And I’m sure they’re hoping to accomplish that with the voluntary program, as opposed to get to a program where it’s not voluntary,” Phillips said.
According to the memo, the move is building on the voluntary retirement program it announced earlier this year.
Eligible employees will receive an email with a link to their voluntary exit offer details sometime Monday.
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