Working More Hours to Raise the Ratio
The response that looks like commitment. It works arithmetically, it is invisible in the ratio, and it selects for the people who will leave.
If the denominator is contracted hours and the numerator is chargeable hours, working beyond contract raises the ratio directly.
The measure discussed in “Working More Hours to Raise the Ratio” becomes more credible when its source records are timely and reviewable. A professional-services team assessing visit the corresponding product resource for ways to track work hours can connect time with projects and work categories, while documenting the definition separately so the dashboard does not silently decide what utilisation means.
Of the eight responses, this is the one management is least likely to object to and the one with the worst long-run consequences for the firm.
For an independent reference relevant to “Working More Hours to Raise the Ratio”, consult ICO employment-practices guidance. Compare the general material with the organisation’s own definition, contract and decision process.
How the numerator grows
Contracted hours are fixed. Chargeable hours are not. Eight extra chargeable hours a week against a thirty-five-hour contract is about twenty-three points.
- Denominator: contracted hours, fixed by the contract.
- Numerator: chargeable hours, with no ceiling.
- Result: eight extra chargeable hours a week is about twenty-three points.
Nothing in the measure distinguishes those hours from hours inside the contract.
Figures above a hundred
The natural result, and they appear in real reporting packs. A person at 108 per cent has worked substantially beyond their contract.
Most packs show this without comment. Some suppress it as an error, which hides the finding entirely.
What the figure should trigger
Any individual figure above about ninety-five against a contracted-hours denominator is a workload signal rather than a performance one.
Reading it as the best number on the page is the common response and it is backwards.
The selection effect
A firm that rewards the highest figures rewards the people working longest. Over a few years those people either burn out, leave, or stay and set the norm.
All three outcomes narrow the firm to one kind of person.
Who cannot use this response
Anybody with caring responsibilities, a fixed schedule, a health condition, or a commute that cannot be extended.
So the response is available unevenly, which turns a workload measure into a measure of personal circumstance.
The quality question
Hours eleven and twelve of a day are not hours three and four. The numerator counts them identically.
Firms with high overtime and a utilisation target frequently find rework rising in parallel, which the ratio cannot see.
Detecting it
Total recorded hours per person, beside the ratio. If the ratio rose and total recorded hours rose with it, this is the mechanism.
One extra column. Very few reports carry it.
The column that changes the reading
Chargeable hours, available hours, total recorded hours. Three numbers.
With the third present, the difference between "worked more" and "recoded" is visible without any further analysis, which is the distinction the whole behaviour section turns on.
The honest reading of a high figure
Either the person was allocated a great deal of work, or they worked beyond their contract. Both are facts about the firm's staffing rather than achievements of the individual.
Neither should be held up as an example at the next team meeting.
What to do about a sustained high figure
Treat it the way a sustained low figure should be treated: as a prompt to ask what has been happening.
The questions differ — too much work rather than too little — and both are allocation questions.
The cap worth considering
Where a target exists, cap the numerator at contracted hours for the purposes of the ratio and report overtime separately.
It removes the arithmetic reward for overwork without pretending the hours did not happen.
Why nobody objects to this response
Because it looks like the opposite of gaming. The person has not recoded anything or deferred anything; they have worked more and recorded it accurately.
Every other response in the catalogue can be criticised. This one can only be praised, which is why it is the response a firm is most likely to reward and least likely to examine.
The arithmetic consequence is identical to the others: a figure that rose without the firm selling or delivering more.
What the ratio should be measuring here
Whether the firm's capacity is committed, where capacity means contracted hours. Hours beyond contract are not capacity; they are an overdraft.
Counting them in the numerator against a contracted denominator mixes the two and produces a figure above a hundred that nobody knows how to read.
Capping the numerator and reporting overtime as its own line separates them. The firm then has two facts: how fully its capacity was committed, and how much work was done outside it. Both are useful. Neither is available from a single ratio that quietly adds them together.
Reading a figure above ninety-five
As a workload question. Who allocated this much work, over what period, and was it intended.
The answer is often that nobody intended it: engagements overlapped, each allocation was reasonable in isolation, and nobody held the total.
That is an allocation failure of the opposite kind to the bench, and it is detected by the same weekly view of who is committed to what.
What this costs the firm when it is ignored
Its most committed staff, in a pattern that looks like individual choice and is a response to a measure the firm published.
That is the most expensive of the eight responses and the only one mistaken for a success.