Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60,000 staff across UK, US, Canada and India
Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60,000 staff across UK, US, Canada and India
Microsoft has opened a voluntary exit programme to about 60,000 employees across the UK, US, Canada and India, the company confirmed to GeekWire on Monday, 26 October. The offer reaches roughly a quarter of its workforce, but the eligibility figure does not indicate how many people will leave: employees still have to decide whether to accept.
Chief people officer Amy Coleman announced the programme in a message published on Microsoft's official blog. It applies to eligible employees at level 70 and below within participating teams. Microsoft says those who take the offer will receive financial assistance and resources to help them plan their next career move.
Who can take the offer
Participation depends on each team's business priorities, customer commitments and staffing requirements, according to Coleman's message. Some organisations are taking part and others are not. Eligible staff were to receive their individual details by email on Monday, making those communications the source of their specific offer rather than a single publicly advertised package.
Microsoft told GeekWire that age, length of service and performance are not eligibility tests for this programme. The package broadly follows its normal severance arrangements, with pay linked to tenure and level, continued share vesting, a limited period of healthcare cover and career transition support. It does not include the extended healthcare provision offered in the earlier retirement scheme.
The company also told GeekWire it expects a lower acceptance rate than for that retirement programme, without publishing a departure forecast. It said voluntary exits do not replace layoffs as a possible response to changing business conditions.
Xbox and Windows are among the participating businesses
Reuters reported, citing a person familiar with the matter, that eligible groups include Xbox, Windows and Devices, AI experiences, Copilot, finance and human resources. Its source said security, marketing and commercial-business units were excluded. That is reporting about which organisations are involved, rather than a commitment that every employee in a named division will receive an offer.
The annual filing cited by Reuters recorded 223,000 full-time employees at the end of June. Microsoft announced 4,800 job cuts in July. Earlier in 2026, a separate voluntary offer covered around 7% of its US staff, or approximately 9,000 people. These are separate programmes, not a combined tally of completed departures.
An early-December decision as AI spending rises
CNBC reported that eligible employees must decide in early December and that those accepting will leave on 31 December, citing a person briefed on the plan. That source also said Microsoft has no target number of departures for this offer. The scale of the eventual reduction therefore remains unresolved even though the pool of eligible workers is unusually large.
The announcement comes during a substantial expansion of Microsoft's computing infrastructure. CNBC noted that the company had forecast capital spending above $50 billion for the quarter ending in September, compared with $34.9 billion including finance leases a year earlier. Those figures describe infrastructure investment; they do not establish that individual employees are being directly replaced by AI systems. CNBC described demand from cloud customers including Anthropic and OpenAI as part of the infrastructure expansion. It also noted Microsoft's wider shift towards charging clients for the AI they actually use.
Coleman presented the offer as a way to give employees considering work elsewhere more flexibility while allowing teams to adjust. Her message also said Microsoft would continue supporting skills development and, where appropriate, moves to other roles inside the business. It did not set out a country-by-country breakdown of expected departures.
Microsoft is scheduled to report its next quarterly results after US markets close on Wednesday, 28 October. Reuters puts the company's projected capital expenditure for calendar 2026 at $175 billion, providing the wider spending backdrop against which the workforce changes are being assessed.