No AI, No Promotion? Accenture Makes AI Use Key to Leadership Roles

IT consulting giant Accenture has told its senior employees that regularly using the company's internal AI tools will now be important for career growth, especially for leadership roles. Associate directors and senior management were told that "regular adoption of AI" would be required for promotions for leadership positions.

The Financial Times was the first to report this and had said that the announcement was made via internal email. The email stated that the use of Accenture's key AI tools would be a "visible input" to move up the leadership ladder.

Confirming the development to CNBC, an Accenture spokesperson said the policy reflects the company's ambition to become the "reinvention partner of choice" for clients and the most client-focused, AI-enabled workplace. This, the spokesperson said, requires employees to adopt the latest tools and technologies to serve clients most effectively.

However, the policy does not apply uniformly across the IT consultancy firm, FT noted. Employees in 12 European countries and those working in Accenture's US government contracts division are not affected by this requirement.

This move is part of Accenture's broader push to reshape its workforce around artificial intelligence.

Last year, the company made it clear that employees who fail to build AI-related skills could eventually face layoffs. During an earnings call, CEO Julie Sweet said all staff would need to "retrain and retool" to stay relevant.

She revealed that around 550,000 employees had already been trained in the basics of generative AI, out of Accenture's global workforce of about 780,000.

"Our number one strategy is upskilling, given the skills we need," she had said, adding that in cases where reskilling is not possible, roles may be phased out and replaced with new talent.

At that time, Sweet had told CNBC that Accenture's early investments in AI were "really paying off." She noted that while companies are excited about advanced AI, many are still not fully prepared to adopt it at scale, creating opportunities for Accenture to step in.

Notably, the firm has also expanded its AI ecosystem. It has announced multiple partnerships in recent months.

Accenture teamed up with OpenAI in December 2025 to provide ChatGPT Enterprise access to tens of thousands of employees. It also partnered with Anthropic to train 30,000 employees on Claude AI tools, while enabling many developers to use Claude Code.

It has also joined hands with Palantir Technologies to train over 2,000 staff using Palantir’s AI platforms.