Accenture Plc has warned employees in India that they will face corrective measures if they walk into the office without booking a seat, suggesting the company has more employees than its office spaces can accommodate.
In an internal email dated 14 March, Accenture’s return-to-office team asked employees to book office seats before coming to work, noting that unbooked walk-ins were being monitored.
“Repeated walk-ins to the office without a confirmed seat booking are being closely monitored, and appropriate corrective action will be taken,” read an internal email sent by Accenture India’s team and accessed by Mint.
Mint could not independently ascertain what these ‘corrective actions’ mean, but this makes the Dublin-headquartered company arguably the first to impose corrective measures for walking into offices without prior bookings.
This move to track unauthorized walk-ins comes as IT outsourcing firms prompt employees to return to the office even as they cut office space. For now, Accenture follows a hybrid policy, with no fixed days to work from the office.
In contrast, homegrown IT services companies prompt employees to work from the office for a fixed number of days. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd requires its employees to work from the office for five days a week, whereas Infosys Ltd has asked its employees to work from the office for at least 10 days every month.
While Indian IT services companies follow an April-March financial calendar, Accenture follows a September-August fiscal calendar.
An email Mint sent to Accenture went unanswered.
This move by Accenture caught employees by surprise.
“We are unable to avail transportation like shuttle services to office locations if we do not have a confirmed seat booking,” said an employee on condition of anonymity.
Balancing margins and capacity
The world’s largest IT services company attributed the move to advanced seat booking to better seat planning.
“Advanced seat booking is critical as it enables effective seat planning and optimal utilization of our office capacity—laying the foundation for a consistent in-office experience,” read the company’s email.
Certain projects in the company have a set number of seats in certain offices, and employees are required to book their seats up to a day in advance, at the latest by 12pm on the day before they intend to work from the office, according to the internal memo.
Accenture added that advanced seat booking would ensure an employee a “dedicated workspace and a seamless experience.” The company has ensured a set number of seats for each project, and employees are required to book their seats up to a day in advance, according to the internal memo.
A second employee said that this move would hinder them from visiting their office and working with their colleagues.
“Some of us like working from the office and would want to do so even on days when our project does not have allocated seats. Making it mandatory to book seats makes it tough for us to do so,” said the employee.
Accenture’s push to increase seat booking raises questions about the company's existing real estate capacity.
“It does suggest that they have more people than seats. Clearly, Accenture can achieve better utilization if space is booked in advance. With margins under pressure, all tech services firms are attempting to be as efficient as possible,” said Peter Bendor-Samuel, founder of Everest Group, an IT research and management consultant firm.
The company stated it is looking to reduce its real estate footprint.
“During the second quarter of fiscal 2023, we initiated actions to streamline our operations, transform our non-billable corporate functions and consolidate our office space to reduce costs. We recorded a total of $1.5 billion related to these actions, primarily for employee severance, which were completed as of 31 August 2024,” read Accenture’s FY25 annual filing.
The real estate question
However, Mint could not ascertain whether Accenture is looking to reduce its real estate footprint, specifically in India, or by how much. The company does not share its real estate by geography nor its headcount across locations.
The company’s margins jumped 100 basis points from FY23 to FY25, to 14.7%. One basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point.
While lower real estate can boost margins, a second expert said that this can become a constraint.
“The consolidation has clearly improved cost efficiency and margin discipline, especially in a slower growth environment where firms are under pressure to protect profitability. However, it also reduces flexibility. When demand for in-office collaboration spikes, particularly for client work, training, or AI-related programmes, the reduced footprint can become a constraint,” said Phil Fersht, chief executive of HFS Research, an IT research and consultancy firm.
In September, Accenture’s management announced it was looking to eliminate people who could not be upskilled. It ended FY25 with 779,273 employees, up by 4,970 employees from the year-ago period. It has already added about 7,159 employees in the first six months of the current fiscal.
Despite questions raised about the office spaces, the company’s management said that it is looking to hire more entry-level talent than it did last fiscal.
“Thanks to our intentional talent strategy, we will hire more entry-level reinventors in FY26 than FY25, which is important for our financial model,” said Julie Sweet, chief executive of Accenture, as part of her prepared remarks during the company’s post-earnings analyst call on 19 March.
Enough space for employees
The company had stated that its current real estate footprint is adequate to house employees, even as it looks to reduce real estate costs across its office locations, as announced in FY23.
“In total, we have facilities and operations in more than 200 cities in 52 countries around the world. We do not own any material real property. Substantially all of our facilities are leased under long-term leases with varying expiration dates. We believe that our facilities are adequate to meet our needs in the near future,” said Accenture in its FY25 annual filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Accenture ended last year at $69.7 billion, up 7% on a yearly basis. Its operating margins jumped 10 basis points over this period, and the company expects to end FY26 with local-currency growth of 3-5%.
The company ended the November 2025-February 2026 period with 786,432 employees. To be sure, Accenture does not provide a geographic breakdown of headcount, but Mint learnt that at least 350,000 of its employees are based in India.
