Deloitte to Reduce Select Benefits for Non-Client-Facing Roles in 2026

Deloitte is slashing benefits for some workers starting next year, including reducing PTO, halving parental leave and eliminating a $50,000 reimbursement for family planning services such as adoption, surrogacy and IVF. The auditing and consulting giant is cutting benefits for workers in admin, IT support and finance while leaving benefits intact for client-facing roles.

An affected worker will see their parental leave cut from 16 weeks to eight weeks.

Joan C. Williams said what Deloitte did is completely unconscionable. "It treats people differently based on the type of job they’re in, and cutting any mother down to eight weeks of paid leave is just outlandish," Williams said.

She added that when labor is tight, employers are more generous, but once the power shifts, the benefits contract. TTEC suspended its discretionary 401(k) match program for 16,000 employees through at least the end of 2026. According to an internal TTEC memo, the company plans to invest in AI certifications, AI tools and training, and automation.

San Francisco-based Zoom has reduced its parental leave for birthing parents from 22 weeks to 18 weeks. The moves come as the costs of employer-sponsored health plans have increased over the past five years. 5 percent in 2026.

The Mercer survey found that without cost-reduction measures, the cost of a health plan would go up by nearly 9 percent in 2026. Subsidies from the Affordable Care Act lapsed earlier this year. Insurers have cited this as one reason they have raised premiums.

Sarahjane Sacchetti, a former top executive at benefits administration companies, told Wired that the poor state of American health care policy and lack of safety net are responsible for a lot of the stress that plagues undercompensated or laid-off workers.

The US is one of the few countries that doesn’t offer a federal paid maternal leave. Joan C. Williams said this just shows how crazy it is to provide employee basics like pension and paid parental leave through private employers rather than how other industrialized countries do it.

Williams, a professor at UC Law San Francisco, added that the US needs to join the rest of the universe. Wired reported that it is important not to normalize these changes by exaggerating them.

Zoom dialed back a policy from very generous to generous, and 18 weeks of paid maternity leave remains a standout in the US. Research shows that diminishing employees’ quality of life and lowering their total wages harms a company’s bottom line. Williams pointed out that widely accepted ways of cutting labor costs have unintended consequences that can hurt, rather than help, an organization’s competitive position.

Wired reported that some of the anger over these decisions should be reserved for a government that has failed to provide affordable health care, paid family leave and other forms of social support.