Supermarket giant Coles and Australian airline Qantas are both set to offshore up to 2,000 jobs to India as part of deals with tech company Accenture.
Australia’s second-largest supermarket retailer will outsource marketing, finance, human resources and technology jobs in order to cut costs amid fierce competition from Amazon.
An official announcement from Coles is believed to be imminent, the AFR reported on Friday, and the deal comes just days after it was revealed that Qantas was in advanced discussions with Accenture to do the same thing.
The deals will only affect back-office roles at the two companies, which both appointed their first female CEOs in 2023.
Coles’ multi-year deal with Accenture is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and will result in estimated job cuts of several hundred to one thousand people from its 5,000-strong corporate office workforce.
“To meet our customers’ growing expectations for seamless, personalised, digital experiences, Coles needs access to the global skills and resources essential to delivering those experiences,” a Coles spokesman said.
“We are constantly exploring partnerships that help us unlock that capability at the scale and pace we need in an increasingly competitive environment, allowing us to move faster, and deliver for our customers.”
The Qantas plan, called Project iQ, will also target up to 1,000 marketing, finance, human resources and other back-office roles, with the exact number of cuts expected to be announced later in the year.
Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson has been involved in the project, despite promising to consider bringing jobs back to Australia when she took over from her homosexual Irish predecessor Alan Joyce three years ago.
The deals come after Australia’s largest supermarket retailer Woolworths, telecommunications giant Telstra, the Commonwealth and the National Australia Bank made similar decisions to send hundreds of roles each to India, and in NAB’s case, Vietnam.
Header image: Left, Coles’ first female CEO Leah Weckert (Coles). Right, Qantas’ first female CEO Vanessa Hudson (UNSW).
