| Topic Name: |
Billable hours quotas |
| Message Name: |
85-90% usual for junior staffers, but flexible |
| Date Posted: |
01/15/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
I work at a Management Consulting firm which uses a 2000 billable hour per annum benchmark to peg bonus levels for all staff members below the rank of director (and implicitly to sow nervousness amongst the ranks).
I've heard of other firms which expect 1600 or so from their consultants, but am hoping to get my hands on a few more examples.
I'm interested in this as a reflection of how firms balance a desire to engender development of intellectual capital with a need to book revenue. |
| Message: |
I have been a senior managers at two major firms (stratgey practices of big 5 firms).
My experience is that junior level individuals (undergrad hires through 2 years post MBA) are nominally expected to hit about 90% utilization over the course of a year. It drops to about 80% at the next (manager) level, and <= 75% at the senior manager level ... and can be quite a bit lower, if one is involved in a significant amount of thought leadership or sales / proposal activity.
Both of the firms I have worked with typically counted most proposal and thought leadership activity towards "billable" houirs in meeting the stated goals, *if* the work was assigned to the individual by the practice. Also, neither firm had an absolute cutoff which suggested that you *had* to hit the nominal target to get a bonus.
As a practical matter, I received good evaluations in the past 2 years even though I hit only about 40% billable utilizatiojn in each year, against a nominal target of 70% ...
Consequently, I am surprised trhat your firm has hard-and-fast "meet the numbers" rules ... especially so at junior levels ... at the firms where I've worked, it's clear that junior staffers are *assigned* to the best available project to meet their abilities, career goals & firm needs ... since they are *assigned* to projects, they are not really in control of whether they hit 80% vs 90% utilization. It is true that a junuior staffer with 80% would be scrutinized at year end, as to whether they had promoted themselves well enough, developed appropriate skills, and delivered onthe projects they had worked on, and *might* be be penalized a bit on bonus if that scritiny came up looking a bit short ... but it would not be a hard-and-fast "numbers" decision.
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