Qantas puts its own HR team on the outsourcing list

Airline’s people function is among the first in line as 850 corporate roles move into an Accenture deal.

By Matthew Sellers

10 Nov 2026

For most Qantas head office staff, today’s email from chief executive Vanessa Hudson was bad news. For the airline’s HR team it is also particularly unwelcome: they will help run a restructure that includes their own jobs.

Qantas expects around 850 roles to be affected over the coming years under a multi-year partnership with Accenture, with the first changes due by mid-2027. Finance, procurement, people and marketing make up the first phase, and Accenture will deliver most of those services from India and some from Australia.

“I know this is hard news for some,” Hudson wrote to staff. She added that the decision “is not a reflection of their contribution or commitment”.

"AI is something none of us has seen in our lifetime," she said in the email.

"It is changing what our customers expect from us and what you need from the tools you use every day, and leading businesses around the world, in aviation and beyond, are moving quickly. Standing still is not an option for us."

"Like every airline, we run on technology built up over decades for a different era, including more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together," she continued.

"It will allow us to unlock innovation faster and accelerate our use of AI, with lasting benefits."

Investors took it more kindly than staff did. Qantas shares rose about 4 per cent in morning trade.

Unions point to an August promise

The deal has been on the cards since August. That month, the Australian Financial Review reported that a plan known internally as Project iQ could move up to 1,000 back-office roles, including HR, to India. At the time, Qantas said it was only in early talks and that “no formal agreement is in place and no decisions have been made”.

The Australian Services Union said back then that Qantas had told it there was no plan to offshore Australian jobs. Assistant national secretary Scott Cowen said the airline must “stay true to these commitments”.

Earlier today, Cowen said sending more jobs overseas was “not in the spirit of Australia”, and that the union’s priority was keeping as many roles onshore as possible. The ASU met members on site the same day. Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine went further, linking the announcement to the airline’s earlier illegal outsourcing of ground crew.

The business case

Hudson’s pitch to staff was mostly about technology. Qantas runs on more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together, she said. The airline says it spends more than $1 billion a year on technology, including through a new Product Innovation Centre in Adelaide that it expects to grow to more than 400 roles. News.com.au reported the Accenture deal will run for seven years.

Costs matter too. Qantas posted a 2025/26 net profit of $1.3 billion, down 19.8 per cent, with high jet fuel prices taking about $420 million off its annual result.

The 2020 shadow

Any Qantas outsourcing move will be judged against what happened last time. In late 2020 the airline outsourced 1,820 ground handling roles, and the courts later found the decision unlawful. The High Court dismissed Qantas’s appeal, the airline paid $120 million into a compensation fund, and the Federal Court then fined it $90 million. Justice Michael Lee described the breach as the “largest and most significant contravention” of the relevant labour laws in their 120-year history.

That case turned on specific facts. The courts found Qantas had taken adverse action to stop workers exercising future workplace rights such as bargaining, as law firm Holding Redlich explains. Nothing made public so far suggests the Accenture deal raises the same issue. But the history means the union, regulators and the media will watch this process closely.

Read next: Woolworths to offshore HR roles

The redeployment test has changed since 2020

Hudson said individual outcomes had not been determined and that Qantas would consult affected employees and their union over the coming months. The airline says it will redeploy as many people as possible through retraining, reskilling and new roles in Australia. It also points to more than 4,400 operational roles created since 2023.

That promise carries legal weight. Under the Fair Work Act, a dismissal is only a genuine redundancy if the employer has met its consultation obligations and redeployment within the business or an associated entity was not reasonable.

The bar for redeployment rose in August 2025. In Helensburgh Coal v Bartley, the High Court held that the Fair Work Commission can ask whether it would have been reasonable to redeploy employees into work being done by contractors. The court did not decide whether that redeployment was reasonable in that case; it left that question to the Commission.

For Qantas, that raises a question the earlier outsourcing case did not test. Some of the Accenture work will be done in Australia, and it is unclear how the ruling would apply where a contractor takes over the same work an employee used to do. That remains untested, but it is likely to come up in consultation.

A further practical issue is how consultants fit. A procurement analyst or HR business partner cannot easily move into a pilot or engineering role, so the operational growth Qantas points to may not translate into suitable redeployment options for corporate staff.

Part of a bigger shift

Qantas is far from alone. Telstra flagged that up to 650 Australian jobs could go, with some roles moving to a hub in India. In June, Woolworths began consulting on offshoring HR, finance and IT roles. Coles extended its Accenture arrangement in August, and NAB told the ASX last month it expects to cut up to 2,500 internal roles in the 2027 financial year.

The common thread is that corporate support functions, HR included, are the ones being redesigned. For Qantas’s people team, consultation starts in the coming months and the first changes are planned to happen by mid-2027.

Outsourcing a corporate function? Five things to get right

Consult before the decision is locked in. The Fair Work Ombudsman says consultation on major workplace change means telling staff about the proposal, explaining its effects, discussing ways to reduce harm and genuinely considering their ideas. Also check what your enterprise agreement or award requires.
Widen the redeployment search. Since Helensburgh Coal, that search may need to cover work done by contractors and labour hire, not just vacancies. Record what you considered and why each option was or wasn’t reasonable.
Notify Services Australia. If 15 or more redundancies are proposed, written notice must go to Services Australia before dismissals take effect.
Be honest about the drivers. If AI or offshoring is part of the plan, say so early. HRD’s NAB analysis made the same point: explaining it later to a union or tribunal is harder.
Manage the psychosocial risk. Long restructures create uncertainty. Workplace safety guidance on psychosocial hazards stresses consulting early and communicating clearly about role changes.