Accenture Ties AI Usage to Promotions in Push to Embed Tools Across Workforce

Accenture has told senior employees they must regularly use the company's artificial intelligence tools or risk being passed over for promotions, marking one of the most explicit attempts by a major professional services firm to mandate AI adoption through career advancement incentives.

The consulting giant confirmed to the Financial Times that it began tracking weekly logins to its AI platforms, though it declined to specify the minimum usage threshold required for promotion eligibility. The policy, communicated through an internal memo, signals Accenture's shift from encouraging AI experimentation to making it a formal requirement for career progression.

For finance leaders watching how their consulting partners navigate AI transformation, the move offers a preview of the enforcement mechanisms that may be necessary to drive adoption beyond pilot programs. Accenture's approach—linking AI usage directly to performance evaluations—represents a harder line than the training programs and optional tools most companies have deployed to date.

The promotion policy follows a September warning to staff that they would need to reskill in AI technologies or face potential job losses. That earlier announcement came as Accenture struck partnerships with OpenAI to provide employees access to ChatGPT, Anthropic for training on Claude, and Palantir for software instruction. The firm has positioned AI services as a core growth driver, crediting them for better-than-expected earnings in its most recent quarter.

The mandate arrives against a backdrop of stubborn resistance to AI tools in the broader workforce. A recent study from Google and Ipsos found that only about two in five US employees use AI even casually in their jobs, despite widespread executive pressure to adopt the technology. Accenture's login-tracking system suggests the company believes measurement and consequences, rather than persuasion alone, will close that gap.

The policy raises questions about how firms can distinguish between meaningful AI integration and performative usage designed to satisfy metrics. Logging into a tool weekly says little about whether employees are using AI to genuinely improve client deliverables or simply checking a box. For CFOs evaluating their own AI strategies, Accenture's experiment may provide early data on whether carrots and sticks can overcome the inertia that has kept adoption rates stubbornly low across industries.

What remains unclear is how Accenture will assess quality of use versus mere access. The company's reluctance to specify usage thresholds suggests it may still be calibrating what "regular" means in practice—and whether frequency of logins correlates with the productivity gains AI vendors promise and consulting firms are now selling to clients.