McKinsey Offers 9 Months' Pay for Voluntary Departures Amid Continuing Tech Layoffs

The company will also give career training to those willing to leave.

PUBLISHED APR 2, 2024

Cover Image Source: Failed Businesses | Andrea Piacquadio | Pexels

Tech layoffs, which started in 2023, are unlikely to end anytime soon. Amid this, McKinsey & Co. has a unique offer for their staff who will be willing to leave the company. The company says that they will be offering nine months' worth of pay as well as career training to those who will be willing to leave. The initiative comes after the firm handed unsatisfactory performance ratings to more than 3,0000 staff, last year. In 2023, the firm also announced that it would be cutting more than 1,400 largely back-office employees and will also slow the pace of promotions. Now this unique move comes to count the effects of financial adversities.

The Times of London reproted that the number of employees who may be facing this initiative is in three figures across the UK as well as the US.

Los Angeles Times Guild members rally outside City Hall against ‘significant’ imminent layoffs at the Los Angeles Times newspaper | Getty Images | Photo by Mario Tama

"We have always maintained a high bar for performance, and for attracting and developing exceptional people. This ensures we can provide distinctive support to our clients, as well as distinctive leadership and mentorship for our people," a McKinsey spokesperson told FOX Business on Monday.

"We routinely refine our approach to development and performance to ensure we continue to meet these goals, and we continue to recruit and hire robustly. These actions are part of our ongoing effort to ensure our performance management and development approach is as effective as possible, and to do so in a caring and supportive way."

McKinsey operates in over 65 countries around the world and is run by Bob Sternfels. The company is not the only consulting firm that is trying to navigate an ongoing slowdown in the industry. An annual report on the consulting market by Source Global Research with data from Deloitte EY, KPMG, and PwC shed light on how the companies are struggling amid spiraling inflation, geopolitical risks, resulting in such steps.

EY called off its demerger and has pushed ahead with job cuts, while PWC has also let go of thousands of consultants, partners, and lower-level staff, all to counter the difficult economic conditions.

The report said that businesses, especially in sectors like tech and consultancy endured a 'poly-crisis' last year.

"This created huge levels of trepidation for clients, resulting in hesitancy when looking to put new consulting contracts out to tender,” the report found. “With clients continuing to adopt a wait-and-see approach to understand where to act if the economy begins to recover, we expect similar levels of hesitancy in 2024," the report read.

“The market is therefore set to become both tighter and more competitive, and this will make it even more important that consulting firms demonstrate where value is being added," said James Beeby, research lead at Source Global.

The report also highlighted how consulting firms can stand out in this intense competition. For instance, cyber-security emerged as the fastest growing business line for the consultancies, rising more than 17% from 2022 to £1.7bn, as per the report.

Since 2023, consultancy firms like Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC have laid off more than 9,000 employees through various rounds of layoffs across both the US and UK.