Microsoft buyout offer to employees: Who is eligible and what more 60,000 techies have been offered
Tech giant Microsoft has offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees, accounting for about 27% of its global workforce, as the company spends heavily on artificial intelligence. According to Microsoft’s Chief People Officer Amy Coleman, the voluntary exit offer was available to eligible employees in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States.
“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us,” Coleman wrote in a blog post Monday. “We’ll learn from it. At the same time, we’ll keep helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft.”
The company, which releases its quarterly financial results Wednesday, had approximately 223,000 full-time employees at the end of June.
Microsoft uses a levelling system that runs from L59 at the entry level to L70+ at the senior level. According to Coleman, the 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.
While details of the buyout have not been made public, Business Insider reported that eligible employees at levels 64 and below were offered one week of base pay per six months of service. Emails sent to employees at levels 65 to 67 stated that they were being offered two weeks of base pay for every six months of service.
Buyout offers also include continued regular stock vesting and health insurance. The standard stock-vesting severance offer is six or 12 months for levels 67 and below, based on years of service, the email stated.
Severance is capped at 39 weeks of base pay for levels 67 and below, while the standard severance offer for level 68 includes 12 months of salary.
Eligible employees will have until early December to decide whether to take the offer and exit at the end of the year.
According to Coleman, this was “a time-limited, voluntary program that gives those who are eligible the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources.”
Earlier this year, Microsoft had rolled out a voluntary retirement program for senior employees at the director level and below. In July, Microsoft said that more than 30% of the 8,750 people eligible for the voluntary retirement program opted to participate.
In July, the company said it was cutting 4,800 jobs, about 2.1% of its global workforce, including many workers in its Xbox video game business.
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