Using the Measure Without the Damage
Six rules that keep what the measure is good for and remove what it does. None of them requires a new system.
Utilisation is genuinely useful for one thing: understanding how much of a firm's capacity is committed to client work, and when.
The practical lesson in “Using the Measure Without the Damage” is that a convenient number should open a question rather than end one. A team considering explore the published setup information for how to measure employee productivity can add consistent time and project context, with transparent settings, limited access and a documented review process around every material interpretation.
Six rules keep that use and remove the rest. None needs a new system and all of them have appeared earlier in this collection.
Additional context for “Using the Measure Without the Damage” is available from Acas working-hours guidance. Current legal, employment, tax and accounting requirements should be confirmed with a qualified adviser where necessary.
Rule one: no threshold
Report the figure, publish the composition, discuss the movements. Do not set a pass mark at any level, for individuals or teams.
- One: no threshold, at any level, for anybody.
- Two: not in appraisal, ratings, promotion or pay.
- Three: published at team level only.
- Four: the definition travels with the number.
- Five: protected work committed and excluded from the denominator.
- Six: never reported without realisation and yield beside it.
This single rule removes most of the behaviour catalogue, because every item in it is a response to a threshold.
Rule two: not in appraisal
The figure does not appear in performance reviews, ratings, promotion or compensation decisions.
If it appears in any of those, it is a target regardless of rule one, because that is where the consequence is.
Rule three: team as the unit
Published figures are team figures. Individual figures are visible to the individual and their manager with the four inputs beside them, and go no further.
No rankings, no lists, no slide comparing people.
Rule four: the definition travels
Numerator, denominator, exclusions and version appear with the number wherever it goes, in the same block of text.
Any change to the definition requires the prior four periods restated on the new basis, published side by side.
Rule five: committed and excluded
Work the firm has decided it needs — training, supervision, development, internal improvement — is committed in the schedule and excluded from the denominator.
Committing without excluding does not work. The exclusion is what removes the individual's cost of honouring it.
Rule six: never alone
Realisation and yield reported beside it, with their product. Lags labelled.
A utilisation figure on its own invites the three readings described at the start of this collection, and the companion figures are what displace them.
The planning report
For planning, committed chargeable hours against available hours for the coming six weeks, by skill.
This is the capacity use, it is the valuable one, and it resists gaming because it is built from client commitments rather than from recorded time.
What the six rules cost
The ability to compare individuals, to set a target, and to report a single flattering number.
All three were things the measure could not support, so the cost is lower than it sounds and the loss is mostly of comfort.
What they preserve
Honest recording, a usable non-billable breakdown, the ability to diagnose allocation and demand problems, and a capacity view that supports planning.
That is most of what a firm wanted from the measure in the first place.
Implementing them in order
Rule four first, because it is cheap and nothing depends on it. Then six. Then two, which is the hardest and most important. Then one, three and five.
Rule two before rule one: removing the consequence matters more than removing the number.
Expected first-year effects
Reported figures fall, as reclassification unwinds. Non-billable categories recover. Arguments about the number largely stop.
The fall should be labelled as a reclassification unwind rather than as a decline, or it will be read as the rules having failed.
What each rule is defending against
Rule one: the eight responses. Rule two: the rules being nominal. Rule three: the four inputs being read as personal. Rule four: the travelling figure and the silent definitional step. Rule five: the disappearance of discretionary work. Rule six: the three readings.
Six rules, six specific failures, each documented earlier in this collection. None of them is a general principle about measurement.
The rule that is hardest to hold
Rule two. There is always a reason to put the figure back into a review: a difficult conversation that needs evidence, a manager who wants something quantitative, a cycle where nothing else is ready.
Each reinstatement is reasonable and each one restores the whole apparatus, because the consequence is what makes a measure a target.
Holding rule two requires somebody to say no to a reasonable request repeatedly, which is the only genuinely demanding part of the arrangement. Everything else here is a format change or a spreadsheet column.
What to expect to be asked
Whether this means nobody is accountable for being busy. It does not: accountability sits with whoever allocates work, at team level, on outcomes.
The question is worth answering carefully, because it is the real objection and it is reasonable. The answer is that accountability moves to the decisions that determine the figure, rather than resting on the people whose hours it counts.
The sentence to be able to say
"We measure it, we publish what it is made of, and nobody is judged on it." A firm that can say all three has a working measure and almost none of the problems in this collection.