How to create a utilization report to boost your performance
June 28, 2024
Effective resource management helps businesses achieve their goals more efficiently, reduce costs, and improve overall success…but how do you know whether or not your resources are being used effectively? Are there resources that are not being used enough or are stretched too thin
That is why resource utilization resource utilization reports are crucial to your portfolio's success
They're the quickest way to determine how efficiently individual resources are used and form an important pillar of effective resource and project management.
An employee utilization report can help your business:
identify under- or overutilized resources
improve resource allocation to new projects and tasks;
predict/forecast future needs ;
improve employee well-being by identifying overworked or underutilized staff ;
reduce the costs associated with high employee turnover, workload gaps and overtime pay.
In this article, we'll show you how to create a utilization report, share utilization reporting best practices, and show you how to use utilization report software to your advantage.
Understanding Utilization Reports
A resource utilization report aims to identify and mitigate any bottlenecks in the project management process.
When a company understands its resource capacity and allocation , it is better poised to identify areas of over- or underutilization and can make better decisions about its projects and resources.
Utilization report definition
A utilization report provides a snapshot of your employees' utilization levels.
It's used to identify your resources' productivity and provide insights into how they can be more optimally assigned.
The Importance of Utilization Reports
An employee utilization report enables project managers and decision-makers to plan more confidently.
They'll gain insight into how much capacity the team has at any given point, streamlining resource planning and future projects.
They can quickly spot potential delays or bottlenecks or identify when the business is over- or understaffed.
Utilization data can also inform future project estimates.
By understanding how long similar tasks take, project managers can create more accurate proposals and avoid underpricing services due to inaccurate time estimations.
Anticipating periods of high workload allows for proactive steps like hiring or training additional staff or adjusting project timelines to avoid overallocation.
The report can also reveal gaps in team skill set by highlighting underutilized specialists, which can inform training programs or hiring initiatives to ensure the team has the right skills for upcoming projects.
Benefits of Utilization Reports for Professional Services Organizations
When used effectively, these reports empower optimized project monitoring and management (enhanced decision-making), ultimately leading to maximized billable hours.
Optimized Resource Allocation
Utilization reports are a game-changer in optimizing resource allocation and maximizing billable hours.
You can assign tasks more assign tasks more strategically by understanding individual skill sets and utilization rates.
For example, a highly skilled but underutilized senior developer might be better suited for a complex project rather than staying on simpler tasks.
Data-driven insights replace gut feelings. Utilization reports provide a clear picture of workloads, allowing managers to make informed decisions about resource allocation for new projects or adjusting existing assignments.
Enjoy better load visibility
Stafiz helps you simplify resource allocation with workload monitoring.
Balance the load faster!
By combining your utilization data with financial information (e.g. daily rate), you can perform a valuation and measure the impact of resource allocation decisions.
Let's illustrate the impact with an example: Imagine a team of 100 people with an average daily rate of €1,300.
By increasing their work rate (billable hours) by 1% using insights from utilization reports, you can generate an additional €300,000 in revenue.
This signifies the significant financial benefit of optimizing resource allocation.
By analyzing historical utilization data and upcoming project demands, project managers can forecast future resource requirements. This allows for proactive planning to ensure they have the right people with the right skills available at the right time.
Having enough resources available means the business can confidently bid on and win new projects, while ensuring that existing projects start on time and are delivered to the best of their ability.
By tracking both time and spending, Stafiz helps you optimize workload planning. (For instance : you might analyze that two juniors can do the job of a senior for some tasks, making it more afordable and keeping the senior role assigned on a more complicated project)
Increased employee satisfaction
Avoiding underutilization keeps employees engaged and challenged, preventing boredom and discouragement.
Addressing overallocation prevents burnout and ensures that employees can deliver high-quality work.
When employees feel their skills are optimally utilized, they feel valued and more invested in their work: keep that into account when sourcing talents.
A happy and productive workforce translates to a positive company culture, which attracts and retains top talent, and creates a strong employer brand
Go beyond simple occupancy optimization with Stafiz!
Go beyond optimizing utilization with Stafiz : enable your resources to participate in their careers by letting them express their wish to work on a given mission and / or skills.
Utilization data combined with project timelines, allows for forecasting future resource requirements..
This enables proactive planning to address staffing shortages or skills gaps before a project begins.
Making adjustments, uch as re-allocating tasks or hiring additional support, to ensure projects can start on schedule without delays caused by resource constraints.
Key Metrics in Utilization Reports
Utilization reports provide a wealth of data points, but some key metrics offer particularly valuable insights for optimizing project management.
(Billable) Utilization Rate
Your monthly or weekly utilization report may use several different metrics depending on your goals and industry, but your typical utilization report metrics will include:
billing utilization: The percentage of the resource's capacity spent on billable working hours;
non-billable utilization: The percentage of the resource's time spent on non-billable tasks (e.g. training, administration, internal consultation);
Total utilization: The overall percentage indicates how much time a person works, either billable or non-billable hours.
By looking at these metrics, project managers can maximize the time resources spend on billable work, directly impacting your bottom line and analyze non-billable utilization to see if there are ways to streamline processes or reduce administrative burdens.
Stafiz integrates a billing module that allows you to seamlessly create and send invoices directly to clients based on billable hours tracked in the system. This simplifies the billing process and ensures accurate revenue capture.
This metric measures the output of a resource either in terms of:
Value: The monetary value of the work completed during a specific period.
Time: The number of hours or days to complete a task or project.
With the right tool, you can also track forecasted production. This allows you to compare actual and forecasted production to identify potential delays or roadblocks and make informed resource allocation decisions accordingly.
With Stafiz
Visualize production and forecasted production including when production will exceed what was planned (you can also be alerted) and identify the reasons (person, task/phase…)
Best Practices and Tips for Utilization Reporting
Utilization reports are powerful tools, but like any tool, there are pitfalls and best practices to be aware of.
Monitor Both Internal and Billable Projects
Track all project types, not just client-facing billable work.
Internal projects contribute to overall resource development and project success and must be accounted for
Senior and top management roles naturally have lower billable rates due to their focus on team support and internal initiatives. Junior roles typically have higher billable utilization rates.
Deep Dive with Tags and Filters
Use tags and filters to analyze billable utilization data for deeper insights. This allows you to identify trends, patterns, and potential bottlenecks.
Analyze data by department, team, individual, role, task, or project phase for a more holistic understanding of resource utilization across your organization.
With Stafiz : analyze your deviations : timed spent vs expected time spent and idenfity where those deviations come from : country/region, team/business unit, projects, particular phase or tasks…
Standardize Project Data
Ensure consistency in project data formats.
When utilization rate teams create complexities when they're calculating and comparing utilization rates in different scheduling units (hours, days, percentages).
Standardization will go a long way towards painting a clear and accurate picture.
Stafiz brings flexibility and standardization throught your organization by enabling to imput multiple granularities
For example a team can input days, some other hours, some don’t even plan a person, but a role (senior, junior…) or even a “profile request” so that you remain flexible in your workload management but also keep on tracking utilization rates both passed and forecasted.
Foster Collaboration Between Departments
Break down the silos that naturally exist between project management and finance departments.
Workload planning by project teams inherently involves cost planning, so collaboration should be encouraged throughout the entire project lifecycle.
Ideally, project management should have access to financial tools for self-monitoring and cost control during projects.
Collaboration is even easier with Stafiz as it enables data to flow throughout the entire organization:
It provides financial tools to the project management team, empowering them with the control and visibility to keep their projects within budget.
Stafiz’s FP&A capabilities gives the finance team the ability to act proactively using an accurate forecast of the activities .
Human resources teams can manage the organization's talent more effectively using factual data that complements appraisal reviews.
Your utilization rate is important, but avoid keeping teams busy at the expense of quality.
Tools like Stafiz empowers your workforce to choose projects and develop skills they're interested in, fostering motivation and ensuring you have a productive and engaged team focused on delivering high-quality work.
Your utilization report clearly reveals how well resources are being used in your company.
By understanding your utilization rates, you can improve project delivery and staff satisfaction and ultimately achieve your business goals.
