Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to as many as 60,000 employees in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India, the company confirmed in a message to staff. The offer reaches a large share of Microsoft's workforce of roughly 223,000 people. Amy Coleman, Microsoft's chief people officer, said the program gives employees the chance to depart with financial support and career planning resources.
According to Coleman's memo, the company is pursuing the voluntary exits as a way to reduce staff without carrying out another round of layoffs. She described the Voluntary Exit Offer as new for Microsoft and said the company will learn from it. Coleman added that Microsoft will continue helping employees focus on priority work, build skills, and find new opportunities inside the company where appropriate, and that no single approach fits every team.
People familiar with the matter said employees across much of Microsoft are eligible, including staff in its AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows + Devices, Xbox, finance, and human resources teams. The cloud + AI group, MicrosoftAI, and corporate, external, and legal affairs are taking part only partially, those people said. Teams in marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security are not participating.
The buyouts arrive months after Microsoft cut 4,800 jobs, a reduction that fell mainly on its Xbox and commercial sales teams. Fortune has reported that Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is planning further rounds of layoffs. The new voluntary program does not target the commercial sales teams.
Microsoft drew a distinction between this offer and a voluntary retirement program it extended to long-serving employees earlier this year. That earlier offer was available to about 9,000 employees and was limited to US staff at a certain employee level whose age plus years of service totaled 70 or more. The current offer is not restricted that way.
In a note on Microsoft's internal HRweb site, the company said the offer is not based on age, length of service, or performance. Microsoft also said it may consider another voluntary exit offer in the future where a business and workforce need exists. The company has framed the program as one of several ways it is trying to meet differing business needs while creating room for its employees to grow.
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