Microsoft Voluntary Exit Offer: Who is an eligible employee and who is not - check here

Microsoft on Monday announced that it is introducing a Voluntary Exit Offer to about 60,000 workers as the tech giant continues to make massive investments in Artificial intelligence (AI). The VEO, the first of its kind for Microsoft, is aimed at reshaping its massive global workforce managing costs without the need for large-scale layoffs.

Who is an eligible and who is not

The buyout, which is being rolled out to roughly a quarter of its total staff at level 70 and below across select teams around the world. While Microsoft has not made any public announcements about employees to whom VEO has been offered, Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the terms, reported that divisions such as Xbox, Windows, Copilot and finance are fully participating.

The report also added that certain pools of employees, including some focused on data centers, sales, marketing, cybersecurity and quantum computing, aren't eligible for VEO.List of countriesIn a blog post detailing the Voluntary Exit Offer, Amy Coleman, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer of Microsoft, said that it was being made available to eligible employees from participating teams in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States.Why has Microsoft offered voluntary exit?Coleman noted that VEO aims to give employees contemplating career changes a supportive transition path while offering internal business units flexibility to adapt to evolving strategic priorities."This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support. It also gives participating organizations another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs," she said.

What will eligible employee get?

According to a Business Insider report, VEO offers are individualized for each employee based on their level, location, and tenure. The US buyouts align with the company's US standard severance offers, it noted.

Employees at internal levels 64 and below were offered one week of base pay per six months of service, and employees at levels 65 to 67 were offered two weeks of base pay per six months of service.

Buyout offers also include continued regular stock vesting and health insurance. The standard stock-vesting severance offer is six or 12 months for levels 67 and below, based on years of service.

Standard severance is capped at 39 weeks of base pay for levels 67 and below, while the standard severance offer for level 68 includes 12 months of salary.

Employees will have until early December to decide whether to take the offer and exit at the end of the year.