Supermarket giant Coles has announced it will move several hundred jobs offshore to India through an expanded partnership with global consulting and digital management firm Accenture, telling staff of the shake-up on Friday morning. The move makes Coles the latest in a growing list of Australia's biggest corporations to send back-office roles overseas, following a near-identical announcement from Qantas just days earlier.
What the Coles offshoring deal involves
Coles has been working with Accenture on back-office functions for some time, but the expanded arrangement will significantly deepen that relationship. Under the new agreement, several hundred roles are expected to be relocated to India, with the company framing the decision as essential to keeping pace with the rapidly evolving retail landscape.
"The retail sector is becoming increasingly competitive as new global players enter the market and technology reshapes how customers shop and what they expect from retailers," a Coles spokesman said.
The supermarket also positioned the move as a benefit for shoppers, saying reduced costs would help it "continue delivering value for our customers at the checkout" and enable "seamless, personalised, digital experiences".
It is understood some affected roles will be made redundant, though Coles said it would offer redeployment and retraining opportunities wherever possible. The company employs approximately 115,000 Australians, and stressed the impacted positions represent a very small share of its overall workforce — with the majority of in-store staff unaffected.
"We recognise the impact this has on individuals and our wider team, and these decisions are never made lightly," the spokesman added. "Any roles affected by the program would be more than offset by the number of Australian jobs created through our ongoing store expansion program."
Coles joins a wave of Australian corporate offshoring
The announcement comes as Qantas confirmed it is in separate talks with Accenture to outsource hundreds of finance, marketing, human resources and other administrative roles — also to India. The back-to-back revelations highlight an accelerating trend among Australia's largest employers.
Woolworths announced in June that hundreds of finance, HR and IT positions would be outsourced to Asia, citing the need to "remain competitive with the rapid expansion of international players in the market." Telstra flagged in February that hundreds of roles would move to India as part of a broader restructure cutting 650 positions. And NAB said in May it would hire an additional 1,000 staff at offices in Vietnam and India, continuing a pattern seen across Australia's major banks of shifting technology and IT functions into Asia.
Across these companies, artificial intelligence is increasingly cited as a driver of workforce restructuring, with corporations looking to harness new technologies while simultaneously cutting costs in the face of rising domestic wages.
Impact on workers and what comes next
Coles has sought to soften the blow by emphasising that affected employees will be considered for redeployment across the business, including through reskilling pathways into other roles. The company said new local jobs would also be generated as its store expansion program continues to roll out across the country.
For workers in corporate and administrative functions, however, the picture is less certain. It is understood redundancies will be unavoidable for at least some of those in affected roles, and the full scope of which positions will be offshored has not yet been disclosed publicly.
The broader wave of offshoring by major Australian employers — from supermarkets and airlines to banks and telcos — is intensifying scrutiny on the impact of global technology and cost pressures on Australian white-collar workers, with more announcements widely expected across the corporate sector in the months ahead.
