Sitting on the bench is a common expression known in the consultancy world. It is term for consultants without an assignment. They are in most companies literally sitting all together in a room bored like hell, sitting on the bench.

As an employer having several consultants on the bench is a big burden. For every bench sitting consultant 10 others need to be billable. Dealing with bench sitting should start before the consultant hits the bench.

However in reality lack of follow up and short term thinking results in looking for creative ways to deal with this phenomenon after it occurs.

Bench Consultants generally feel like being on the edge of unemployment, get bored, de-motivated and it is important to find ways to deal with their situation.

A few things you can do to keep those consultants motivated:

• Don't put them all together in one room. They don't only share technical knowledge but most certainly they share their de-motivation and negative feelings.

• Anticipate on knowledge, instead of sending one consultant with the appropriate knowledge send a 'bench consultant' along. Even if the assignment is far from his technical expertise, it will benefit in several ways. The consultant feels useful whilst receiving on the job training and the expert consultant feels appreciated for his wisdom.

• Make sure you have a database of online courses available. Get subscriptions to CBT courses, Cevora courses and use them by providing all required information to your consultants.

• Listen to the consultant! Often they have an idea on what to learn, look into. Don't underestimate them. They generally know not only the technologies on the market but often they recognize the 'hot technologies' and are willing to invest energy in it.

• Appoint one person to listen and assist these consultants in looking for opportunities.

Of course your business is not only about keeping bench consultants happy. It is about doing business, creating a profit, selling and investing. Developing a strategy to avoid bench sitting is a proactive approach that must be part of your companies strategic action plan. However should you find yourself in a situation where your proactive plan fails, you may need to reside to a reactive approach.

Here are a few guidelines on how to reduce your number of bench sitters as quickly as possible:

• Hold 'daily' bench meetings with sales and staffing management. The purpose of the meeting must be about evaluating daily opportunities and match them to available resources. Next to the daily meeting, hold one status meeting a week. In the status meeting use your whiteboard to draw opportunities with their characteristics on one side and your available consultants with their characteristics on the other side. This meeting is import to see the global picture. The risk with holding only daily meetings is that you could quickly reside to short term thinking. That is the worst strategy to addopt at this time!

• Motivate you consultants to enlighten their Curriculum Vitae. I am not talking about inventing experience; I am talking about emphasizing technologies. Help them to explore their knowledge without being modest.

• Contact previous customers of the consultants. Often Customers are interested in getting the same consultant back on their new projects. If possible let the consultant himself contact his former customer to tell him he is available. Preferably let the consultant do this 'before' his previous assignment finishes and you're sure that the contract is about to end.

• If the daily rate is under the consultants daily cost (these are desperate measures and should be thought through carefully) make it a short time assignments. In this case I define the cost of the consultant as Total cost without overhead cost. With a short time assignment you can look for better opportunities to follow to reduce your loses.

• Refuse 'pre-assignments'! This is often a cause for bench sitting. Consultants waiting for a project to start. In many cases the start date is unknown and there is no formal commitment from the customer.

• Invest in your company projects. Do not waste your resources on a bench. Appoint a project manager on internal projects and get them implemented with the available resources.

• Shift in your technology focus where needed. Reassign some bench consultants on technologies with a big market share/potential. Use on the job training as much as possible. Field experience is ten times more valuable than a course.

These are only a few guidelines to deal with bench sitters.

Obviously the best way to deal with bench sitting consultants is to work proactively towards resources planning. Avoid having consultants on the bench must be one of your goals. In case your organization has to deal with this phenomenon do this together with your consultant. Share them your concern and ask them to participate in searching for opportunities. If you both want to survive in this market, working together is your best shot!