Microsoft offers voluntary exit scheme in India, US, UK and Canada

Washington: Microsoft has opened a voluntary exit programme for employees in India, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, in a move that reports say could reach about 60,000 workers as the technology giant balances a costly artificial intelligence buildout against its payroll.

The company announced the Voluntary Exit Offer (VEO) on Monday in a message to employees from Amy Coleman, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, which Microsoft published on its official blog.

“This offer will be available to eligible employees in participating teams in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States at level 70 and below,” Coleman wrote.

“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,” she said.

Microsoft did not give a figure for the number of eligible employees in its announcement. CNBC, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that around 60,000 people are eligible, or about 27 per cent of the company’s workforce of about 223,000.

Microsoft also did not say how many of the eligible staff are in India, where it runs large engineering and support operations.

Not every team is taking part. “Some organisations are providing the Voluntary Exit Offer, and some are not. Participation varies based on each business’s priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs,” Coleman wrote.

The Verge, citing people familiar with the situation, reported that teams including Copilot, CoreAI, Windows and Devices, Xbox, finance and human resources are taking part, while marketing, commercial business, quantum and security teams are not.

According to CNBC, employees must decide on the offer in December, and those who accept will leave the company on December 31.

Coleman said the programme builds on the company’s Voluntary Retirement Program offered earlier this year, which was limited to a smaller group of long-serving US employees.

“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We’ll learn from it,” she wrote. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee.”

She said the company would continue “helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft.”

The offer comes months after Microsoft announced plans in July to lay off about 4,800 employees, mainly in its Xbox and commercial sales teams, according to reports.

The company has been sharply raising spending on data centres to meet demand for AI computing, including cloud capacity it supplies to OpenAI, Anthropic and other firms. US technology companies have been looking for ways to fund that buildout while holding down costs.

The inclusion of India makes the programme one of the few large Microsoft workforce measures this year to reach beyond North America. India is home to one of Microsoft’s largest employee bases outside the United States, and many of its US engineers are of Indian origin.

The move also comes at a sensitive time for Indian tech workers in the US. Microsoft was among companies whose PERM labour certification filings were suspended by the Labour Department on October 8, and the company has publicly defended its use of the H-1B programme. Coleman’s message did not refer to visa holders, and it was not clear how the offer would apply to employees in the US on work visas.

Microsoft has said the offer is not based on age, length of service or performance, according to a note on its internal HR site seen by The Verge.

Eligible employees were to receive an email with details of their offer within hours of Monday’s announcement, Coleman said.