The Figure in an Appraisal Conversation
Once utilisation enters a review, it is a target regardless of what the reporting pack calls it. What to do with it if it is already there.
A utilisation figure in a performance review is a target, whatever the reporting policy says. The person knows it will be read, and shapes the data accordingly from then on.
The measure discussed in “The Figure in an Appraisal Conversation” becomes more credible when its source records are timely and reviewable. A professional-services team assessing Monitask for time tracking with screenshots for time tracking with screenshots can connect time with projects and work categories, while documenting the definition separately so the dashboard does not silently decide what utilisation means.
That is the main argument for keeping it out. For firms where it is already in, there are narrower things to do.
The assumptions behind “The Figure in an Appraisal Conversation” can also be tested against NLRB employee-rights guidance. Record which recommendations apply to the real workflow and which do not.
Why its presence is decisive
Appraisal is where consequences attach. A measure with consequences attached is being managed toward by everybody affected.
- In the pack: a figure beside a caveat, discussed and discounted.
- In the review: a figure beside a rating, recorded and permanent.
No amount of framing in the pack changes this, because people respond to where the consequence is, not to where the caveat is.
What it displaces
Review time spent on a percentage is time not spent on the work. The number is specific and concrete, and conversations drift toward the most concrete item on the page.
Discussions of quality, client relationships and development lose to a figure with a decimal point.
The four inputs, in the conversation
If the figure is present, the four inputs from the earlier note should be present with it: allocation, role, denominator, recording.
Then the conversation can at least establish which part of the number is about the person, which is usually the smallest part.
The allocation question first
"Which engagements were you on, and which were you considered for." Before any discussion of the level.
Where the answer is that nothing suitable came up, the figure is information about the firm and the review should say so in writing.
What a manager should not say
That the figure needs to improve, without naming which of the four inputs is expected to change and who controls it.
An instruction to improve a number whose main inputs the person does not control is an instruction to reclassify.
The written record
The risk is a bare percentage in a file, read years later by somebody with no context, in a promotion or redundancy decision.
Where the figure is recorded, the denominator and the allocation context are recorded in the same field.
Suppression cases
Ramp-up, phased return, a quarter on an internal project, a role change mid-period.
In each, the figure should be absent rather than annotated, for the reason the returners note gives: numbers travel and notes do not.
The better object of the conversation
What the person worked on, what came of it, what they learned, what they want next. The hours are an input to none of these questions.
Where billable availability is genuinely the issue, it is usually visible without a ratio.
The case where the figure is useful
A sustained, unexplained gap over several periods, with allocation accounted for. Then it is a prompt.
The prompt is to ask what has been going on, not to set a numerical expectation for next quarter.
Removing it without a replacement panic
The common objection is that something has to be in the review. Revenue, realisation, delivery and client outcomes are all available and none is recorded by the person.
They are slower and less precise. They are also closer to the job.
The transitional arrangement
If it cannot be removed at once, remove it from the rating and leave it in the discussion, with the four inputs. Then remove it the following cycle.
Half-measures here are more durable than announcements, and the first step costs nothing.
What the person hears
That the number is what the firm cares about. Whatever else is said in the conversation, the figure is the part with a decimal point and the part that appears in writing.
People calibrate to the measured thing, not to the discussed thing. Managers who verbally discount the figure while it sits in the written record are giving two signals, and the written one wins.
That is why removing it from the record matters more than changing how it is discussed.
The sentence managers reach for
"I know the number doesn't tell the whole story, but..." Said with good intent and heard as a preamble to being judged on the number.
It is also an accurate description of the situation, which is the problem: the manager is apologising for an instrument they did not choose and cannot override.
Giving managers a review form without the figure removes the need for the sentence. Most of them experience that as relief rather than as a loss of information, which is the clearest evidence available that the figure was not carrying the conversation in the first place. Where a manager does object, the objection is usually about having nothing quantitative to point to, which is a request for a different measure rather than a defence of this one.
The test a year later
Ask managers what changed in review conversations. Where the answer is that they talk more about the work, the removal did what it was meant to.
Where the answer is that nothing changed, the figure was never carrying the conversation and removing it cost nothing at all.