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"Beach", "Bench", "Between Projects" Management

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by md_hashim

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Most consulting organizations maintain workforce on the bench (beach etc.). Keeping resources occupied on the bench is a challenge in itself.
What is the typical percentage of workforce on bench in your organization? What kind of trainings, activities and exercises does your organization have for resources on the bench? Pls share your thoughts/experiences.

17 replies

by akshay.pat

We have in-house training packages. These are both technical and non-technical (soft skills). Staff between projects are urged to subscribed to training and their applications are evaluated before having them trained.
We also have regular in-house tech presentations and staff who are talented enough get to present techniques to the not so well versed.
We have about 5-8% people between projects typically.
HTH.

by rob mekel

Instead of keeping staff on the bench I have a small workforce on the staff. If needing some extra workforce on the floor we hire people. This from a preselected group company?s. These pre-selected companies are selected by our HRM-department based on tuff selection-criteria, set by me and my staff AND general criteria HRM sets.

Those hired people have to be carefully managed. So the tasks to my staff is more a managerial task then a technical one, though they should have knowledge in the field there workers/projects are in.

On the cost site of this all there has to be an evaluation on what is cleaver and what isn't. Rule to me is:
normal business -> staff
projects -> hired people (except programmanager)

And even on staff I have the rule that there has to be a flexibility of at least 10% but no more then 35%.

I hope this will help you

by ajitbhusari

It directly related with the companies roadmap and the funnel. But the practice we follow is to have a 10% as bench at min and 25% at max. This gives a flexibility in balancing resources across projects on need base.

by gardoglee

I would strongly dispute your assertion that most companies maintain a bench. From what I've seen at my current employer, and a couple before that, "on the bench" is synonymous with "here's your pink slip". the question about bench is not how many you keep, but how long you can be on the bench before you are automatically terminated. Typically that is somewhere in the two to four week range, sometimes less.

by hemal_sanghvi

Having worked for this company for 9+ years, in various departments, I have not seen any "bench" concept. I think a bench is a luxury for an organization driven towards better, faster & cheaper.

by ciacob

From my experience with my current employer, I believe it is necessary to have a bench in order to keep IT employees fresh. We don't currently utilize this model, but I have seen how constant project overload with no reserve resources can wear out the best employees and set back other project timelines.

by md_hashim

Sorry - I believe you missed "consulting" :)
In India - the BPO hub - consulting is becoming big time! Since most organizations begin with a call support and try to make it to technical support, they tend to hire for later use! Thats where I meant to start this from....
Apologies if I led you off at a tangent.

by gardoglee

There are many different things which one can mean by consulting, but I would guess that everyone reading this thread is probably familiar with at least several of them. At the low end are Rent-a-Coder vendors, aka body shops. At the high end are specialized experts, sometimes referred to as hired guns. That span of characteristics seems to exist in all IT markets, India included.

Many US based IT workers have the impression that the only services offered by the typical India based shop are the very lowest sort of coders. That is not a realistic picture of all India based companies, but it is true of many of the early entrants into the field, just as it was in the US, Europe and the Middle-East in an earlier day. For that reason, your initial question may have been misinterpreted by many readers.

Technical support center agents are typically no more skilled than entry level coders, whatever the location, so many people who are in the higher end of the 'consulting' business seriously resent being put into the same bucket as a call center agent at a BPO company which is trying to rise into the technical support market. You need to consider that when asking the question.

by corporate refugee

I have been on the bench since November 1 2005...And I have to say I am sick of it. I took holidays owing over christmas and have come back to find that I am still no closer to a placement. I now feel as though I am wasting my time and have begun to look around for another position. This time of year is traditionally slow, but I am sick and tired of waiting around doing the IT equivalent of reorganising a sock drawer. I am also afraid that I will get the first crappy role that comes in or alternatively get landed with work that is not career enhancing. In some ways it would be better to get laid off...
Thoughts anyone ?

by gardoglee

One of the more successful guys I've ever met (started as a single consultant, now has a company with 50 consultants, and a packaged software development division) had an idea for hoiw to deal with not having a contract. he would go out to potential custoimers and offer them 2-4 weeks of free consulting for some small project. People thought he was crazy, but every one of the companies for which he did this ended up hiring him for an engagement, and hiring his other guys later. He made sure they knew he was the real deal before they had to invest a lot.

I don't know whether that is something which your employer would accept, but it is better than sitting around waiting for someone to notice you aren't producing revenue.

by gardoglee

You are right that it is necessary to have some breathing room to keep employees fresh and motivated, to get their best thoughts and quality work, and to provide the best service levels to your customers, either internal or external. The problem is that in a period where management has finance breathing down their neck, in which it is perceived (rightly or wrongly) that there is a glut of talent looking for work, and where growth is a product of buying out competitors rather than retaining customers, none of those objectives are considered important.

Of course, if your employees (or the managers) have an issue with eighty hour weeks for forty hour salaries, no vacations for literally years at a stretch ("we're sorry, but due to project deadlines all vacations are on hold until further notice..."), no training because it was a "luxury", and back loaded wishful-thinking impossible schedules, you just tell them their job can be outsourced to India.

Perhaps I live on the wrong side of the rainbow, but I don't know anyone anywhere else who hs an employer whose top management even considers the "individual contributors" to be worth noticing, much less considering their job quality.

by too old for it

The last few contract firms I have been with throw you under the bus the instant the contract terminates. Notice is in the range of 1 - 2 hours.

I find this builds intense employee loyalty. I know I am just waiting by the phone for them to call with yet another 2 week project.

by brunobrunetti

Don't keep a bench, unless you don't like making money for your organization.

Small consulting companies have changed their buiness models to no bench. Meaning hire a consultant as a 1099, or W2 for an engagment or project.

Now, I think if the market continues to pickup as it has show us in the past 6 months, then the model might change, and consulting companies will begin to hire employees again, and pay them a ton of money because resources will be hard to come by.

For now, don't keep a bench!

by corporate refugee

thanks for the response...I have in fact been doing some small pieces of work for different businesses. These however have not unfortunetly led to a longer term committment. Hence my comment about sock drawer re alignment.

I have therefore come to the conclusion that I should pursue a role out of consulting given the amount of downtime I have experienced and try to get a "real job" on the client side rather than the vendor side. Most of the roles I have had working for a consultancy ( except my last placement) were very ordinary and as a result I do not feel I my career will develop within my current firm. In essence I feel that they have a bottom feeder approach and will shop you out to where ever they can, regardless of your skills and experience. Very dissapointing from my perspective.

by gardoglee

There are many 'consultancies' which operate the way you say. Whether you call them a body shop, rent-a-coder, or some other disparaging name, they are lousy places to work for exactly the reasons you state.

Keep the hope up. While the vast majority of places do seem to be body shops, they are not all that. There are still some actual consultant agencies worthy of the name. You just have to be both damned lucky and damned good to get into one.

And of course, some places are actually worse than a body shop. Some firms will suck you in young, bleed you dry with 100-hour mandatory work weeks (on a forty-hour salary) doing poor quality work, and spit you out as a lifeless husk. All the while you have to lie to the customer about what you are doing, lest they catch on that they are being conned.

Getting a job in-house is sometimes the way out of the fix you are in. For example, you are in one place long enough to learn both the first and last names of some of your coworkers. It can be quite a novelty!

The downsides of being in-house can include having to deal with more internal politics (contractors typically can avoid some of the infighting), or getting dead-ended into supporting some legacy pig of a system while the veterans get all the new development. So there is no guaranteed cure for the IT blues.

by md_hashim

The idea of "extending" services free was a good one. Tried that in-house - loaning apt people to other BUs and that seems bring back some motivation. The learning here is well taken too.
Another task thats bringing results is BD support. S&M were requested to share RFPs and RFIs with techies and they're slowly becoming a market savvy lot! :)

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