Fall means more than pumpkin spice lattes and football season for Accenture employees; it’s time for the annual review, and more importantly, Accenture promotion, bonuses, and raises!
While Accenture did away with the laddering process a few years ago, it’s fully back on now.
Employees are rated against each other at the same level within their project, which then cycles up through office location and practices.
These ratings determine how much more money will find its way into Accenture employee pockets, in the way of salary increases, cash, and equity bonuses.
Awards are typically announced the first week of November.
Accenture Annual Raises
Accenture annual raises typically compare pretty well to the other major consulting firms. You can review Accenture salary information here.
The data below is from the 2019 fishbowl survey of more than 1,000 employees. Responses included if they received a promotion or not.
Though varying by level, employees who didn’t receive a promotion averaged a 5.5% raise, while those who received a promotion averaged a 15.4% raise.
The largest percentage raises for promotions belonged to MDs (L4), Senior Managers (L6), and Managers (L7).
The disparity grows even larger when you look at the dollar amount of raises, with MDs averaging almost twice as much as everyone else.
When you drill down into the details, there were many promotion raises that jumped into the upper-20s and even 35%+ percent!
The non-promotion raises aren’t as exciting with averages in the single digits; the highest raises are going to Managers and Consultants.
Accenture Cash Bonuses
The next piece of the Accenture pie is the annual cash bonus.
There are two categories of cash bonuses: Individual Performance Bonus (IPB) and Global Annual Bonus (GAB).
IPBs are intended for more junior employees who have less impact on company performance, where GABs are usually for L7+ because leadership can have easier “global” impacts.
However, L7+ will usually get some amount of IPB on top of their GAB.
There’s a pretty clear trend with bonuses, the higher your level, the higher your bonus. This is true in percentage, but especially true with dollar amounts.
Cash bonuses can help with the MD cashflow issue, but a lot of it will get eaten up by taxes and the VEIP.
Bonuses for L9+ averaged around 9% for regular bonus and promotion bonus, but those below L9 only averaged a few percent.
Just as with salaries, MDs clearly take the cake in dollar terms, with their average cash bonuses over $40,000, doubling almost every other level, adding to their already high MD total compensation numbers.
Accenture Equity Bonuses
Equity bonuses are also awarded during the annual review. They’re awarded as Restricted Share Units (RSUs) at a dollar amount, converted to shares, and then vest 1/3 per year over the next three years.
If the award is granted in the 2020 performance year, they’re awarded Jan 1st, 2021, but the first 1/3rd doesn’t vest until Jan 1st, 2022.
The full amount of this 1/3rd stock award will count as income when the RSU’s vest.
Equity awards are only given to Accenture leadership, and as this survey indicated, only levels 6 and higher (Senior Managers through MDs).
The chart is truly eye-popping for MDs who receive a promotion because newly promoted MDs receive a much larger equity grant that takes fives year to vest.
However, most of these grants will need to be kept in Accenture stock to satisfy MD equity ownership requirements.
The non-promoted leadership who receives grants follow the three-year equity awards vesting mentioned above.
Some L5 and L6 can receive decent equity grants, but the real equity is awarded to MDs. Even non-promoted MDs averaged $60,000 in equity awards in 2019.
