Spanglett's Current Staffing and Work Assignments Process and their Relationship to other Administrative Processes.

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BUSN 610 – October 20, 2003

Dana William Edwards

Spanglett Associates – 9-681-080

Introduction

Spanglett Associates is a professional services firm with an office based in Chicago. Manny Temple is the managing officer of this location and is responsible for staffing individual projects. In this case his dilemma is whether to place Sally Stone on a project based out the Houston office or to place Sally on a new project at her existing placement.

Spanglett’s Current Staffing and Work Assignments Process and their Relationship to other Administrative Processes

According to Maister, there are seven administrative systems that should be reviewed holistically because the links between them are very strong and these ultimately directly contribute to how to staff projects. These administrative systems are recruiting, training and development, counseling, performance evaluation, compensation, promotion, and work assignments.

Spanglett uses a senior consultant, selected to be the personnel manager, to serve their office by selecting junior and senior consultants for assignments. This position is held by a consultant for a one to two year period. In addition to selecting the proper staff for a position, a substantial selling component was necessary to convince Lead Officers (LO) that the selections made would be appropriate. The tools available to the personnel manager to make assignment selections included an Availability Report, meetings with a managing officer and six fundamental rules: 1) assemble the best possible team for the client, 2) consider staff development, 3) booked jobs have priority, 4) extension jobs take priority over new jobs, 5) project logistics and final staffing is done only through the LO or the project coordinator, and 6) commit a staff member at the last minute possible.

On a weekly basis, personnel managers exchanged their Availability Reports in order to facilitate discussions of using staff members from different offices. These Availability Reports were used in conjunction with billability goals to keep individuals billing at a proper level. In times of undesirably high billing, the company perceived that they were missing out on opportunities for new business development. Personnel expected project durations to be accurate within a tolerance of two weeks. This kept the Availability Report, billability, and downtime synchronized as best as possible.

Work assignments were considered the format for training junior consultants such as Sally Stone. The only other mention of training and development was the personnel manager for one select senior consultant at each office. On a monthly basis, an appraisal committee reviewed staff members and their progress. Future assignments would take the feedback from this meeting into account but that was not always possible. The personnel manager consulted with various individuals in the office to insure that the assignments were the best possible. In addition to staffing, the job of the personnel manager was to counsel employees by acting ...

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In this particular case, Harry Burbridge, the personnel manager, is the center of the relationship between the different, major administrative systems at Spanglett Associates. He makes 60% of the assignments on his own, he is responsible for training and development, employee counseling, and the performance evaluation. Compensation and promoting are downstream functions of critiquing an employee’s performance. If the performance is satisfactory or better, then the employee is assigned to more difficult tasks and perhaps receives a promotion.

Maisters’s Values Applied to Spanglett & Their Scheduling

In the terms of Maister, Spanglett values client service as the most important aspect of an individual’s assignment. Immediately following the client service priority, Spanglett values professional development, profitability and finally staff morale. This is most evident when reviewing the six guidelines for Harry Burbridge to follow for staffing. From the article, it does not appear as though that is consistently applied. Harry makes reference to pressures from his seniors to staff his projects with the people they are most comfortable with. While this is not necessarily against the explicit staffing policy, there is no evidence that it is strictly followed at Spanglett.

Lead Officers are the liaisons to the client. Because of this relationship, the LO is the primary contact and is responsible for communicating important factors such as their interpretation of the importance of the project. Most likely, this would be biased because of the competitive nature established within Spanglett. Lead Officers need to bring to Spanglett additional revenue and they understand that the best way to keep the customer satisfied or happy is to deliver projects with good resources. Lead Officers would put pressure on Harry to get the resources they wanted or they would issue a formal complaint to the chief executive, Rod Tischman.

Harry did have good information with which to place individuals. This information was gathered from monthly review sessions with others in the company that had worked with particular consultants. This group provided insight on opportunities for growth and recent accomplishments. This data was mixed with counseling the individual consultants on career paths in order to determine next assignments. This information appeared to be free of bias and should have been good input into the scheduling process.

Placing Sally Stone

Maister has documented a set of inputs he suggests should be considered in choosing a work assignment through a scheduling system. There is some overlap of these with those used at Spanglett; however, the criteria Maister suggests to use are more thorough and are documented in the following figure.

Figure 1 Client-Related and Staff-Related inputs into deciding how to place Sally Stone.

Spanglett’s criteria for work assignment selection are more focused on the client and not as much focused on the staff.

Conclusion

Temple needs to insure that his choice optimizes four categories for the firm. Profitability of the project and the firm, client satisfaction, staff satisfaction, and professional development of Sally and the firm are the major areas of concern for Temple. Sally has stated that she would be equally satisfied with either assignment because both assignments allow her to perform as the acting senior consultant.

Baker estimates that the Sequoia engagement will produce between $160 and $180 thousand in revenue. Sequoia provides a good opportunity for future growth for Spanglett because of the deregulation of the distribution networks. This project could serve as a stepping stone to additional engagements. In addition, Sequoia is a company which Spanglett has been trying to capture as a client.

While Baker has honed in on Sally Stone, the Client’s expectation is that the project will be staffed from Spanglett’s national pool of resources. Spanglett has four offices and should have the resources to cover the project. The Sequoia assignment does broaden Sally’s support at the top management levels.

Wilson has estimated that the APC project will produce between $200 and $300 thousand in revenue for an existing client. While the client is the same, the project is actually a new project that grew out of an existing one. The project that served as part of the selling point for the client was Sally’s existing APC project for their new distribution strategy. Herbert Jablin is available to start at the appropriate time; however, he would be a new addition to the team and this change could upset the client. Wilson and Stone have an existing working relationship.

Professional service firms’ (PSF) greatest asset is their people. This is true not only for PSFs but also for most companies. Procedure at Spanglett indicates that the first priority in choosing team members is to assemble the best possible team for the client. According to the research the personnel manager, Baker, and Temple have done, Sally is best suited to work on the Sequoia assignment. Based on the second criterion, assignments should provide for staff development. Sally will not be widening her technical knowledge with the Sequoia assignment but she will have a unique project management opportunity. Sally will be the acting senior consultant on a project with a weak lead officer. Professionally, she will have the opportunity to improve by working with a new officer and by having a little bit more latitude in executing the project. A weak lead manager should afford her the opportunity of more client interaction as well.

From Spanglett’s point of view, Sequoia is more of a “Grey-Hair” project. This affords their firm the opportunity of bringing in lower-cost, junior consultants to execute on a project that has become more of a staple for their company. Sally will have a great opportunity to train and lead the team to success. This is a positive move for her professional career at Spanglett as well as Spanglett’s presence in a new company.

After assigning Stone to Sequoia, Temple should assign Herbert Jablin to APC with additional senior consultants to insure that project would be as successful as the Sequoia project will be.

David H. Maister notes that the scheduling of work assignments is the single most important administrative task in a professional service firm in his paper “Job Assignments Set the Pace in Professional Service Firms”.

“Spanglett Associates”, David H. Maister, Harvard Business School, Case 9-681-080, p. 4.