Accenture backtracked on cutting its real-estate footprint — and now it's warning companies about ditching offices and going all-remote
Accenture, which has 55,000 employees in the US, offers a case study in the unintended real-estate consequences of moving to more remote work, its CEO highlighted on a Thursday earnings call.Accenture is cutting US staff and top execs just warned of more pain to come as the consulting giant promotes fewer people and looks to control costs
In the 1990s, the company, along with some of its peers, adopted "hoteling" – more recently called hot-desking – in which employees reserve workspaces, rather than having assigned desks. Because consultants often work at client sites, they may not need a fixed desk or office, and the company can have fewer desks than employees.
"Particularly in the US, we took out a lot of real estate because we said 'Oh, our people are at client sites or they could be at home,'" CEO Julie Sweet said on Thursday's earnings call. She said CEOs, often "excited" about the idea of getting rid of real estate, are asking her for advice, since Accenture did what many executives are assessing now.
"What we found, in fact, over the last five years when I was running North America, we started gradually to expand that footprint again because there is a benefit of bringing people together as well," Sweet said.
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