Accenture Is Monitoring Whether or not Staff Use AI—And Promotions Are on the Line – Decrypt

Need a promotion whereas working at Accenture? You’d higher begin utilizing the corporate’s AI instruments—usually. (They’re watching.)

The consulting large has begun gathering information on weekly logins to its AI platforms from senior workers, and despatched an inside e mail to managers and affiliate administrators making it clear: shifting into management requires “common adoption” of synthetic intelligence, in response to paperwork seen by the Monetary Occasions.

Not like different firms that both punish AI utilization or are attempting to do away with human workers in favor of AI brokers, Accenture is actually turning AI instrument utilization right into a KPI. One of many merchandise below the microscope is, after all, Accenture’s AI Refinery, the enterprise platform CEO Julie Candy has been closely selling to traders.

Accenture’s enterprise mannequin is constructed on advising different firms on easy methods to modernize, and apparently, it desires to set an instance for different firms coping with the dilemma of utilizing AI at work.

“Our technique is to be the reinvention companion of alternative for our shoppers and to be probably the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great spot to work,” an Accenture spokesperson instructed Decrypt. “That requires the adoption of the newest instruments and applied sciences to serve our shoppers most successfully.”

The transfer is a component of a bigger inside stress marketing campaign to power the adoption of AI. Candy instructed traders in September that workers who could not adapt to AI could be “exited.” The corporate’s personal language describes employees for whom reskilling shouldn’t be a “viable path” as candidates for separation, in response to The Guardian. The login-tracking coverage is the formal model of that risk.

Accenture has been on an AI spending spree. It skilled 550,000 of its 780,000 workers in generative AI—up from simply 30 individuals in 2022—and dedicated $1 billion a 12 months to studying packages. In December, it introduced partnerships with each ChatGPT creator OpenAI and Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot. Final June, it merged all its essential divisions right into a single unit it known as “Reinvention Companies” and began calling workers “reinventors.”

Simply final week, Microsoft’s AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman argued that the majority white-collar roles—together with legal professionals, accountants, undertaking managers—may very well be “totally automated” by AI inside 12 to 18 months. Accenture is making its consultants show they use AI instruments to maintain their jobs and doubtlessly get hold of higher ones, on the actual second the individuals constructing these instruments are saying the roles might not exist for much longer anyway.

A Pew Analysis Heart survey from February 2025 discovered 52% of U.S. employees are fearful about AI’s impression on the office, and roughly one in three assume it should shrink their long-term job alternatives.

ManpowerGroup’s 2026 International Expertise Barometer, which lined almost 14,000 employees throughout 19 nations, discovered that common AI utilization really jumped 13% in 2025. Confidence in it, although, collapsed by 18%.

“Employees are being handed instruments with out coaching, context, or help,” ManpowerGroup’s VP of International Insights Mara Stefan instructed Fortune. Some 64% of these surveyed stated they’re staying in jobs they hate particularly out of worry that leaping ship throughout an AI transition is simply too dangerous.

The boldness collapse hits hardest in older demographics—precisely the group Accenture is concentrating on with this coverage. Child boomer confidence in AI dropped 35%, in response to that survey, whereas Gen X confidence dropped 25%. Accenture itself acknowledges older and extra senior workers are extra immune to adoption, and its answer is outwardly to observe their login frequency and dangle potential promotions over their heads.

As Decrypt beforehand reported, a Yale Price range Lab examine discovered the broader labor market hasn’t really seen AI-driven disruption but. Jobs are shifting about one proportion level quicker than in the course of the early 2000s web growth—however it’s barely measurable.

The apocalypse remains to be pending. However the stress on particular person employees to carry out AI fluency is already very actual, and really measurable.