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United Kingdom
Key takeaways
Around 60,000 Microsoft employees are eligible for voluntary exit packages.
Participating teams include HR, finance and AI experiences.
The company has not disclosed how many employees it wants to leave or how many workers will receive offers.
Microsoft is offering voluntary severance packages to around 60,000 employees, in a scheme covering more than a quarter of its global workforce.
The figure represents the number eligible for an offer, rather than confirmed job losses. The company has not publicly set out a target for departures.
Which Microsoft employees are eligible for buyouts?
The offer covers eligible employees in participating teams in the UK, US, Canada and India at level 70 and below on Microsoft’s internal grading system.
Eligibility depends on which parts of the business are taking part.
Reuters reported that employees in AI experiences, Copilot, finance, HR, Xbox and Windows + Devices would be eligible. Marketing, commercial business and security would be excluded, a source familiar with the matter told the news agency.
In an internal message published on 26th October, Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s executive vice president and chief people officer, said: “Participation varies based on each business’s priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs.”
Microsoft employs approximately 220,000 across the globe.
What does Microsoft’s voluntary exit offer include?
The scheme allows eligible employees to choose to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources. A voluntary severance package is an offer of support in return for an employee agreeing to leave their employer.
Coleman described the scheme as follows: “This is a time-limited, voluntary program that gives those who are eligible the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources”.
Eligible staff were told they would receive an email containing a link to their individual offer details within hours of the announcement. Microsoft’s public message did not specify payment amounts or a deadline for accepting the offer.
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The number of eventual departures will depend on how many eligible employees take up the offer.
Staff buyout offer follows Microsoft’s earlier job cuts
The buyout scheme follows Microsoft’s announcement of around 4,800 job losses in July and an earlier voluntary retirement programme. The company said the latest offer draws on its experience of that retirement scheme.
When announcing the July cuts, Coleman said more than 30% of employees eligible for the retirement programme had chosen to participate. Microsoft also said it had moved more than 4,000 employees into new roles over the preceding year.
The July restructuring primarily affected its commercial and Xbox businesses. Coleman said at the time that the eliminated roles were not being replaced by AI, while acknowledging that automation was changing tasks and requiring employees to develop new skills.
