Microsoft Gives ‘Voluntary Exit Offer’ To 60,000 Employees, Roughly 25 Percent Of Its Total Workforce

Microsoft’s latest cost-cutting plan involves offering buyouts to roughly a quarter of the company, essentially providing 60,000 people with the option of laying themselves off, Business Insider reports. They’ll get a generous severance package in exchange for choosing to voluntarily leave the tech giant. “The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We’ll learn from it,” Chief People Officer Amy Coleman wrote in a memo to staff. “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. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee. These are a few of the ways we’re trying to meet different business needs while continuing to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute.” It’s not immediately clear which divisions and departments within Microsoft will be eligible for the new cost-cutting program. Xbox is one of the more high-profile parts of Microsoft that has undergone substantial rounds of annual layoffs in recent years. The gaming division previously announced a goal of 3,200 layoffs through June 2027 as part of its current “reset” of Xbox. This is the second voluntary layoff program Microsoft has instituted this year. The company launched a Voluntary Retirement Program back in the spring that gave veteran employees the chance to collect their severance packages and certain vested stock options early. The offer was extended to 9,000 employees, and about a third of them accepted, according to Business Insider.