What happened
On 10 November, Qantas told staff it will cut 850 corporate jobs in Australia under a new multi-year deal with the professional services firm Accenture. CEO Vanessa Hudson called it “hard news for some” in an email to staff. Here is what the airline and the reports say:
- The changes start with finance, procurement, people (HR) and marketing roles.
- The work Accenture takes over will be delivered mostly by its teams in India, and some in Australia.
- The first changes should be in place by mid-2027, with more roles going over the following years.
- Qantas says it runs on more than 1,000 old software applications that were never built to work together, and spends over AU$1 billion a year on technology.
- It plans to redesign how these corporate teams work and cut duplication. Over time, the outsourced work will be changed further with automation and AI.
- Qantas will consult staff and unions before final decisions, and redeploy people where it can.
News about job cuts is usually told from the side of the people losing them. For an Indian MBA student, the other side matters too. Somebody in India has to build the team that takes this work over, and that is a very real HR job at IT services firms and global capability centres.
The case
You're the HR lead at the Bengaluru delivery centre of a large IT services firm. A foreign airline client is outsourcing its finance, procurement, HR and marketing work to you, starting in mid-2027. Today about 850 people do this work in the client's home country. Your delivery head asks: how many people do we need, how do we hire them, and how do we make sure nothing breaks during the handover?
1Clarify
- How much of the work comes to India, and how fast? We only know that most of it does. We need a number, and the speed sets our hiring curve.
- Is the work moving as it is, or being redesigned first? If the client plans to cut duplication, we shouldn't hire one person per old role.
- What does the contract measure? Payment accuracy, invoice turnaround and payroll errors decide how much slack we can afford while new people learn.
- Who teaches our people? The knowledge sits with staff who are losing their jobs. Whether they stay engaged is a big risk.
2Structure
Four questions, one after the other:
- Size: how many people we need at the start, and once things settle.
- Source: where they come from: experienced hires, freshers, or people moved from other accounts.
- Transfer: how the know-how moves from the old team to the new one.
- Retain: how we keep the new team long enough for the work to stay stable.
3Analyse
Don't hire 850 people
Start from the one hard number, 850 roles, and make clear assumptions (all made up for the case):
- 80% of the work comes to India, since we only know that most of it does. 850 × 0.8 = 680 roles' worth of work.
- Redesign removes 25% of it by cutting duplicate steps. 680 × 0.75 = 510 people once things settle.
Only the 850 is reported. The 80% and 25% are assumptions for the case, not Qantas or Accenture figures.
But the first wave needs extra people
New joiners are slower while they learn. Assume the work moves in three equal waves, and that new people work at 75% speed for their first three months.
- Each wave's settled need is 510 ÷ 3 = 170 people.
- At 75% speed, the first wave needs 170 ÷ 0.75 ≈ 227 people to cover the same work.
- Once they're up to speed, 227 − 170 = 57 people are spare. Instead of letting them go, move them to wave two as trained hands. Wave two then needs only 170 new hires, with 57 experienced people already in place.
What shadowing costs
The safest handover has our people sit alongside the old team before they take over. Say 8 weeks of shadowing for the first wave, at an average cost of ₹7 lakh a year per person (an assumption). That's 227 × ₹7 lakh × 8 ÷ 52 ≈ ₹2.4 crore spent before we earn anything from the work. It sounds like a lot. A payroll run that goes wrong in month one costs far more in client trust.
Plan for people leaving
Back-office teams in India lose people every year. At an assumed 20% yearly attrition, a settled team of 510 loses about 102 people a year (510 × 0.2), or roughly 8 to 9 a month. Hiring has to keep running long after the handover ends.
4Recommend
I'd hire in waves that follow the client's functions. Start with about 227 people for wave one, with 8 weeks of shadowing, and settle at around 510 across all waves. People hired early move into later waves rather than being let go.
First, it matches the client's plan to redesign the work, so we don't overhire. Second, extra people at the start protect service levels while the team learns. Third, moving trained people forward means each later wave starts with experience.
The biggest risk is losing knowledge. The people teaching us are losing their jobs and may not stay engaged. I'd ask the client to consider stay bonuses for the handover period, and I'd have every process written down before each wave goes live.