Mass layoffs of employees. Deloitte wants to avoid them thanks to AI.

Global consulting giants found themselves at the end of 2023 facing a paradoxical call: despite widespread recruitment at the beginning of the year, they now have to carry out further mass layoffs. To avoid this, Deloitte, as one of the first companies, is testing and implementing a new, artificial intelligence-supported personnel management system.

According to a report by Bloomberg magazine, its aim is to strategically move employees from less active roles and sectors of the organization to positions that are more important and require more attention at a given time. The management of these processes and the assessment of the competencies required for specific positions are to be entrusted to AI.

– Of course, it's a huge challenge to avoid major fluctuations in recruitment and dismissal. However, we can always be more effective and efficient in searching for new talents – commented Stevan Rolls, global chief talent officer at Deloitte.

These changes come after the company hired 130,000 people this year, but even during the recruitment warned that thousands of employees in the United States and the United Kingdom may lose their jobs due to a slowdown in demand in some sectors. In this context, Deloitte sees the use of AI for personnel management not only as a temporary solution to the problem, but also as a key step in the development of the organization. The company currently employs 460,000 people worldwide - three times more than a decade ago.

– Imagine the company growing twice as big again. It would be a big problem to employ a quarter of a million people a year – added Rolls.

Deloitte and other consulting firms have already started experiments with the use of generative artificial intelligence to eliminate repetitive and time-consuming tasks that have long been delegated to junior employees. Currently, the preparation of documents for internal meetings or data collection is entrusted to tools such as ChatGPT.