Why Juniors and Seniors Cannot Share a Number
Chargeable share falls with seniority by design. A single target across grades asks the most expensive people to stop doing their jobs.
One firm's chargeable share by grade, same definition throughout
1,540 available hours. Induction, training, work that gets redone.
1,540 available hours. Capable, fully allocated, no other duties.
1,480 available hours. Delivery plus supervision, often on a junior target.
1,480 available hours. Review, recruitment, client relationships.
1,420 available hours. Selling, supervising and running the firm.
The spread across grades is 51.9 points, and it is what the grades are for. A single target across all five asks the most expensive people in the firm to stop doing the job they were promoted into. One firm's own year, not a benchmark.
Chargeable hours as a share of the week fall as seniority rises, in every firm, by design. A junior delivers; a partner sells, supervises, recruits and decides.
The measure discussed in “Why Juniors and Seniors Cannot Share a Number” becomes more credible when its source records are timely and reviewable. A professional-services team assessing task switching cost for task switching cost can connect time with projects and work categories, while documenting the definition separately so the dashboard does not silently decide what utilisation means.
A single target across grades therefore asks the senior grades to abandon the work they were promoted to do.
As a separate benchmark for “Why Juniors and Seniors Cannot Share a Number”, see CISA insider-risk mitigation resources. External guidance is most useful when it prompts a specific check rather than replacing case-by-case judgement.
The shape of the curve
Low in the first year, because of training and ramp-up. Highest in years two to four, when the person is capable and has no other duties. Falling steadily after that.
A partner at thirty-five per cent is not underperforming. A partner at eighty-five has stopped running the firm.
What the senior non-chargeable hours are
Selling. Reviewing. Recruiting. Training. Client relationships outside engagements. Firm management.
Every one of these is the reason the grade exists, and none of them appears in the numerator.
The consequence of one target
The senior grades either miss it visibly or meet it by dropping the duties. Both outcomes are bad and the second is worse and slower to detect.
A firm whose partners hit a high utilisation target for two years will have a thin pipeline and no trained juniors at the end of it.
The grade-specific target
The obvious repair: a different expected range per grade, reflecting the job.
Better than one number, and it still carries the problems the targets section describes, now applied within each grade.
The junior's first year
Structurally low and often read as a slow start. Induction, training, shadowing, work that gets redone.
A ramp-up exclusion in the denominator fixes the arithmetic. Nothing fixes the impression if the figure appears in a review before the ramp is over.
The years that look best
Two to four. Capable, fully allocated, no management duties. This is where the highest figures in a firm sit.
It is worth saying out loud, because a firm that rewards the highest figures is rewarding a career stage rather than a contribution.
The manager squeeze
The hardest position: expected to deliver chargeable work and to supervise, often with a target set near the junior level.
Managers are where supervision is dropped first under pressure, and where the quality consequences originate.
The blended figure
A firm-level average across grades is a function of the seniority mix as much as of anything operational.
Hiring juniors raises it; promoting people lowers it. Neither movement says anything about efficiency, which is why blended figures are poor trend indicators through a period of growth.
Comparing between firms on this
Hopeless without the mix. A firm reporting eighty per cent with a pyramid of juniors and one reporting sixty-five with a senior advisory model may be equally healthy.
The benchmark note here covers why this is rarely adjusted for.
What to measure at senior grades instead
Revenue brought in, work won, people developed and retained, client relationships held.
All slower and harder to count than hours, all closer to the job, and none of them recorded by the person being measured.
The promotion that lowers the figure
A person promoted into a supervisory grade will see their utilisation fall, immediately and by design, because the role contains non-chargeable duties.
Under a single target this is a measured decline in performance coinciding with a promotion, which is an absurd result and a common one.
Firms that notice it usually respond by exempting the person informally, which works until somebody looks at the written record two years later.
What the exemption should be instead
A stated range per grade, published, with the non-chargeable duties of each grade named.
That turns an informal accommodation into a property of the role, which is what it is. It also makes the cost of the duties visible: if a grade is expected to spend a quarter of its time on supervision and development, the firm has written down what it is buying.
The alternative is an unwritten understanding that differs between managers, applied unevenly, and invisible to anybody reading the numbers later. Unwritten accommodations are granted to the people whose managers think to grant them, which is not a distribution any firm would choose if it were stated out loud.
The shape of the curve as a published fact
A table of expected ranges by grade, with the non-chargeable duties of each named, published alongside the figures.
It costs nothing and it removes an entire class of misreading: a partner at thirty-five per cent is at the expected level for the grade rather than at the bottom of a list.
It also makes the firm state what it is buying with senior non-chargeable time, which few firms have written down anywhere.
The arrangement that works
Chargeable hours reported at all grades without a threshold at any of them; accountability at senior grades on outcomes rather than on the share of the week spent on client codes.
It requires giving up the comparability of one number across the firm, which was never real.