Consultancies, law and accountancy firms, agencies, architects and recruiters sell their people’s time and judgement. Progression is the career story, utilisation is always in the background, and a small central team runs the review cycle for partners who are busy with clients. This page explains how the sector runs appraisals, with examples you can adapt.
Most firms publish a grade or level structure: analyst to consultant to manager, trainee to associate to partner. Each grade carries expectations for client work, technical skill, business development and leadership of others. The annual appraisal is mainly a conversation about where someone sits against the next grade and what evidence would support a promotion case. Where the framework is vague, promotion decisions drift towards who is visible to which partner.
Utilisation and billing targets exist in almost every firm, and they are easy to pull from the practice management system. They say little about the quality of the work, the client relationship or how someone treated the juniors on the job. Firms that rely on hours alone reward the people staffed on the biggest matters. Better reviews put the numbers alongside project feedback from the partners and managers who saw the work.
An associate may work for six different partners in a year. The line manager or counselling partner who owns the appraisal saw only part of it. Firms therefore gather feedback at the end of each engagement or matter, while the detail is fresh. The appraisal then draws those together, and the person is not judged on the one project their appraiser happened to lead.
In a firm of 15 to 200 people, HR is often one or two people, sometimes the office manager or a partner with the HR hat. The cycle lives in Word forms and a spreadsheet, and the work is chasing: partners who have not returned forms, reviews stuck at the second signature, and the year-end deadline arriving during a client deadline. Completion, not design, is where most firms’ processes fail.
A typical pattern. Your own calendar, agreements and policies come first.
Agree client, skills and business-development objectives against the grade framework. Note the promotion case being built.
The engagement lead writes a few lines on the work and the person’s contribution. It is stored against the person, not lost in email.
Review utilisation, feedback received and progress on objectives. Adjust for a change of team or practice area.
Self-assessment, engagement feedback and the appraiser’s view. Partners moderate across the practice before pay and promotion.
Promotion cases are built from the year’s evidence. Criteria for the next grade are published and applied consistently.
Three illustrative scenarios showing a goal, the evidence that informs it and the conversation that follows. Adapt them to your own roles.
Illustrative voices. New Dynamics wrote these composite perspectives to reflect themes that are common in the sector. They are not customer testimonials, and the names do not refer to real people.
I was one person chasing forty partners for forms in January, which is their busiest month. Half the cycle was never completed. The process was fine. The chasing was the problem.
A consultant works for six partners in a year and is appraised by one of them. Unless the other five write something down at the end of each project, the review is one person’s opinion.
New Dynamics connects goals, feedback, recognition and reviews in one place. Bring a real process to the demo, and confirm each requirement with the team.
Send us the review form and grade framework you use today. Stages, reminders and sign-off run in the platform instead of a spreadsheet.
Explore the featureGather feedback from the partners and managers who saw the work, each with a defined contribution.
Explore the featureKnow which reviews are done, which are waiting on a partner and which are overdue, without counting returned documents.
Explore the featureSee how objectives for client work, skills and business development could stay visible, with the promotion case building through the year.
Try the interactive preview
Explore a focused space for an engagement lead to record a few lines on the work while the detail is fresh, stored against the person.
Try the interactive preview
Hours and utilisation are useful context and most firms include them. They should sit alongside feedback on the quality of the work, client relationships and contribution to the firm, because hours alone reward whoever was staffed on the largest matters.
Collect short feedback at the end of each engagement or matter from the partner or manager who led it. The appraiser then draws that feedback together at the annual review. Reviews with input from more than one manager are designed into New Dynamics.
Keep forms short, run the cycle in one system with automatic reminders, and schedule the appraisal window away from the busiest client periods. Completion tracking replaces manual chasing. Bring your current form to a demo to see how the cycle would run.
Configurable stages, forms and participants are central to the platform. Send the appraisal form, grade framework or spreadsheet you use today and we will show your cycle running in the platform before you commit to anything.
Site-based and office-based staff in one cycle, competency frameworks per trade and an end to paper forms.
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