Research Design: SNA to help growing consulting firms avoid burnout and mentor new employees

IntroSmall consulting firms often experience growing pains as they increase their client load and bring in new employees. Talented senior managers, recognized for their expertise, find they are spending so much time mentoring new employees that they cannot stay attuned to their clients’ needs or meet their own billable hour targets.

Question

Can SNA help firms in such a position identify these talented but overburdened senior managers and offer ways of ensuring that the firm both retain its key senior leaders, meets the needs of its clients, and develops its new employees?

Hypotheses
SNA can help firms 1.) identify talented but overburdened senior managers and 2.) identify equally talented junior managers to whom the senior managers can either transfer a portion of their client work or responsibilities in mentoring new employees.

Data Required
For the purposes of the study, the network consists of all the firm’s employees. Employees should be surveyed along the following three sets of attributes:

1.     Demographics and position:

a.     Title

b.     Years with the firm

c.      Years of experience

d.     Gender

e.     Age

f.      Average number of billable hours per month

2.     Expertise (this list is illustrative and should be customized given the nature of the firm’s business):

a.     Supply Chain management

b.     Stakeholder Engagement

c.      Research Design

d.     Trend Analysis

e.     Materiality Assessment

f.      Strategy Development

g.     Governance Practices

3.     Connections to other employees:

a.     Each employee is asked to rank how frequently they seek out information or advice from every other employee.

                                      i.     Frequency is measured on a 5 point Likert Scale (1 = never,  5 = very frequently)

                                     ii.     In larger firms, it may be too time-consuming to ask employees to rank their interactions with all other employees. It may be more effective to ask employees to identify the top five employees with whom they interact the most.

Network Measures

Addressing Hypothesis 1: The senior managers at risk of burnout are identified as those having: 1.) a high level of seniority, 2.) high average billable hours and 3.) high in-degree connection scores, especially among more junior employees – a measure which serves as a proxy for being sought out for expertise.

Addressing Hypothesis 2: to match these senior managers with junior managers with the capability of being new mentors, we first identify junior managers who share similar expertise profiles to senior managers, but currently have fewer in-degree connections.

Benefits to the Firm

The firm could employ this data in two days. It could decide that to formalize the mentorship role of it senior managers, lowering their billable hour targets and directing them to shift their focus to supporting new employees.  In this scenario, senior managers would transfer some of their client load to these high-performing junior managers. Alternatively, the firm could decide to keep its senior managers focused on client work, and formally shift mentoring responsibilities to the more junior, but equally skilled, managers. In either case, the firm benefits by being able to better align its resources to meet internal and external demands, and ultimately continue to grow its business.