In a recent episode of the “Rapid Response” podcast, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said AI proficiency is a mandatory part of working at the consultancy and moving up its ranks. The company announced in September it has invested more than $865 million in a “six-month business optimization program,” including reskilling thousands of employees—and showing the door to those who refused to adapt to using evolving workplace technology.

“If you want to get promoted, you’ve got to do the things that we do in order to operate Accenture,” Sweet said.

“These are the new tools to operate a company,” she added. “We didn’t go from zero to ‘you won’t get promoted’ in a month. It’s over a three-year period of getting used to the technology, making sure it’s user-friendly, making sure we have the right workbench for people to use, and then saying, ‘Hey, this is Accenture and how we operate.’” 

The mass reskilling effort is part of Accenture’s three-year, $3 billion push to integrate AI first announced in 2023. One goal of the effort was to double the company’s AI talent to 80,000 professionals through hiring, acquisitions, and training. Accenture has more than 770,000 employees.

But Accenture’s embrace of AI has been an exception rather than the rule. As of the fourth quarter of 2025, 38% of companies reported integrating AI to improve workplace productivity, efficiency, and quality, according to a Gallup poll, a 1% increase from the quarter before. To be sure, AI adoption is still on the rise, with 69% of workplace leaders using AI as of 2025’s fourth quarter, up from less than 40% as of 2023’s second quarter.

CEOs and other executives have approached AI adoption and impact with skepticism. A study published in February by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that among 6,000 C-suite executives, two-thirds used AI, but that usage amounted to only about 1.5 hours per week. About 90% of those respondents reported over the past three years, AI had no impact on employment or productivity. 

That could all soon change. Those same executives also forecasted a 1.4% increase in productivity and 0.8% increase in output over the next three years. The education company Pearson estimated that augmenting jobs with AI and reskilling employees could add between $4.8 trillion and $6.6 trillion to the U.S. economy within the next decade, per a report published in January.

Why Accenture went all in on AI

According to Sweet, integrating AI into the workplace is a natural extension of when computers become ubiquitous. The typewriter classes of yesterday are analogous to the AI reskilling of today, she suggested.

“No one would have said that requiring someone to use a computer is coercion,” Sweet said. “It’s how the companies were going to get work done. Today, AI at Accenture is how we do work.”

Still, Sweet has empathy toward companies resistant to making the sweeping changes Accenture has made to accommodate an AI future. She previously told Fortune Editor in Chief Alyson Shontell that companies’ failed attempts to integrate the technology in the office were a result of using AI as a tool in a previously established workflow, when it was really most effective when workplace systems were built with the technology in mind.

“First of all, I think we’re a good lesson in something that I’m advising CEOs all about: In order to capture the opportunity with AI, you really have to be willing to rewire your company,” Sweet said. 

Accenture’s own employees hit snags in embracing AI, she noted. Welcoming change associated with the new slate of tools was challenging, for both employees and old business.

“For our people and our clients, it was hard,” Sweet said. “How do you have the courage to do that? That’s where you have the humility, but also this idea of embracing change and innovation.”