Friday afternoon allocation
A new investigation comes in from a retained client and needs to start next week. A director looks at the team. Priya seems busy but always says yes. Tom said he was quiet but has three hearings next week. The associate on Thursdays and Fridays might have space. The director gives it to Priya because she is reliable, which is how Priya ends up with twice the caseload of anyone else and starts looking at job adverts.
Nobody made a bad decision. They made it without information.
Why load is invisible
- Live cases are in a case list, hearings in Outlook calendars, retainer clients in the CRM and project work in a proposal folder.
- A case count means little: one grievance can be quiet for weeks while one investigation fills a fortnight.
- Travel to client sites is rarely counted, though it takes whole days.
- Associates and part-time consultants have different availability that nobody has written down centrally.
- Consultants under-report how busy they are, especially the conscientious ones.
The cost of guessing
Overloaded consultants make more mistakes and leave. Clients get slower responses from them and faster ones from others, which feels inconsistent. Directors end up doing case work themselves to fill gaps they did not see coming. And the business cannot plan hiring, because it has no view of whether the team is genuinely stretched or just unevenly loaded.
| Signal | Where it lives today | In the caseload view |
|---|---|---|
| Live cases by stage | Case list or spreadsheet | Counted and weighted by stage |
| Hearings and meetings | Individual calendars | Shown by week, with travel |
| Retainer clients | CRM owner field | Weighted by recent usage |
| Projects and audits | Proposal folder | Planned days by week |
| Leave and working days | HR system | Available capacity per week |
How we build the caseload view
- We connect to where the work is recorded: your case records, Microsoft 365 or Google calendars, CRM and HR system such as BreatheHR or HiBob for leave.
- Each type of work gets a weighting you choose, for example an investigation in its interview stage counts more than a grievance waiting on an appeal date.
- Hearings and site visits are read from calendars, with travel time added where the location is a client site.
- Retainer clients are weighted by how much advice time they have actually used recently, if you record that.
- The view shows each consultant's load by week for the coming weeks, against their working pattern and leave.
- When new work arrives, a director enters its type, client and start date and sees a suggested shortlist of consultants with room, ranked, with the reasoning shown. The director makes the decision.
- Consultants can flag themselves as stretched, which appears on the view whatever the numbers say.
We also keep the weightings visible and editable. If directors feel a stage is under-counted, they change the number and the view updates, so the model of the work improves as the team uses it.
Weightings are rough on purpose. The point is to make a sensible conversation possible, not to turn consultants into a utilisation score.
What directors and consultants notice
Allocation becomes a short decision with the facts on screen. Load evens out, and the consultants who always said yes stop carrying the team. Directors can see a crunch coming a few weeks out and bring in an associate before it hits. Hiring conversations become evidence-based. Consultants also get something: a view of their own coming weeks in one place.
Recognise this?
- New cases go to whoever seems least busy.
- One or two consultants carry far more than others.
- Hearings clash because nobody saw the full diary.
- Directors pick up case work to fill gaps at short notice.
- You are not sure whether you need another consultant.