Want a promotion while working at Accenture? You’d better start using the company’s AI tools—regularly. (They’re watching.)
The consulting giant has begun collecting data on weekly logins to its AI platforms from senior staff, and sent an internal email to managers and associate directors making it clear: moving into leadership requires “regular adoption” of artificial intelligence, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.
Unlike other companies that either punish AI usage or are trying to get rid of human employees in favor of AI agents, Accenture is essentially turning AI tool usage into a KPI. One of the products under the microscope is, of course, Accenture’s AI Refinery, the enterprise platform CEO Julie Sweet has been heavily promoting to investors.
Accenture’s business model is built on advising other companies on how to modernize, and apparently, it wants to set an example for other companies dealing with the dilemma of using AI at work.
“Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work,” an Accenture spokesperson told Decrypt. “That requires the adoption of the latest tools and technologies to serve our clients most effectively.”
The move is part of a larger internal pressure campaign to force the adoption of AI. Sweet told investors in September that employees who couldn’t adapt to AI would be “exited.” The company’s own language describes workers for whom reskilling is not a “viable path” as candidates for separation, according to The Guardian. The login-tracking policy is the formal version of that threat.
Accenture has been on an AI spending spree. It trained 550,000 of its 780,000 employees in generative AI—up from just 30 people in 2022—and committed $1 billion a year to learning programs. In December, it announced partnerships with both ChatGPT creator OpenAI and Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot. Last June, it merged all its main divisions into a single unit it called “Reinvention Services” and started calling employees “reinventors.”
Source – https://decrypt.co/358616/accenture-tracking-employees-use-ai-promotions