Identifying Your Over-Utilized Consultants Before They Burn Out
As a consulting firm owner, your “rockstar” consultant – the one who handles the most complex projects and requires the least amount of oversight – is actually your biggest flight risk. And not because they are in such high demand; but because they are so good at what they do, they are “first call” on projects, and that can lead to burnout if their billable hours are not planned and managed carefully.
Compounding the problem is the fact that high performers are less likely to complain about overwork. They are naturally wired to solve problems and go above and beyond. This makes them especially vulnerable to burnout. Since you don’t know when a consultant’s workload will become unsustainable, the high-performer will just “play through the pain” of being overbooked and simply get the work done. And when they finally can’t keep up with the workload, they will be already deeply burned out and ready to quit.
When You See Burnout Happen, It's Already Too Late
For all consultants, burnout doesn’t happen suddenly; it builds up over time due to sustained over-utilization. And for consulting firms using spreadsheets for time tracking, tracking over-utilization is a backward-looking, reactive process: You only see the problem after it has happened, usually at the end of the month when all the timesheets have been submitted and the project data has been compiled into reports. You can try to reallocate work at that point to relieve some of the burden on overworked consultants, but the damage has already been done.
Identifying Potential Burnout Before It Happens
A dedicated PSA software solution that incorporates automated time tracking and resource planning provides you with a real-time view into which consultants are approaching (or already at) the point where burnout sets in – usually anything more than 45-50 hours per week for multiple consecutive weeks. Because the time tracking in a PSA software platform is continually updated, you not only can see the current state of your project resource allocation, but you can intervene before burnout conditions happen. You can choose to reallocate consultant hours to other less-intensive projects, shift timelines, and know exactly when it is time to hire another consultant.
Scope creep is another hidden cause of burnout, because those additional hours that weren’t in the original SoW aren’t usually accounted for when planning and managing your resources. The real-time nature of PSA-enabled time tracking will help you identify scope creep as soon as it happens, protecting your team’s health and your firm’s margins.
Protecting Your Most Valuable Assets
Introducing automated time tracking to your consulting team might appear to them to be micromanagement, but the truth is, it is the best way to ensure they are healthy, engaged and productive. Your team, and especially your highest performers, won’t have to tell you when they are becoming overworked, because you will see it coming before it happens. And with everyone having a balanced workload, the morale of your team can stay consistently high, without the risk of sudden unexpected resignations from overwork causing chaos and doubt among the rest of the staff.
Don’t wait until your staff is already exhausted to check on their capacity. You can get an accurate, forward-looking view into your availability and utilization today by signing up for a free trial of Projectworks, or let us demo Projectworks for you.
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