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Planning Is Caring: The Case for Incentivizing Resource Planning

When you implement ��«ӰҵAPP, you’re not just getting software—you’re getting the management playbook. Incentives, best practices, and KPIs from thousands of companies are built directly into your workflow. Here’s a tried-and-true way to incentivize planning across your organization

“Show me the incentives, and I will show you the outcome.” – Charlie Munger

You can roll out processes, workflows, and even new software all day. But if your incentives don’t align with the behavior you want—nothing changes.

But getting consistent participation across teams can be hard for anything foundational. That’s not a people problem. All firms face the same challenge—it’s an incentive problem.

Why Planning Matters

Planning isn’t just good project hygiene—it’s the foundation for:

• Preventing overcommitment, overpromising, and burnout
• Setting realistic deadlines clients can trust
• Improving on-time and on-budget delivery
• Understanding backlog to prevent layoffs
• Improving forecasting for effective financial planning

Most importantly though, by assigning work earlier and more efficiently, firms increase utilization and drive profit through more billable hours.

When it comes to resource planning, it’s first important that everyone in the firm understands that it drives utilization—which drives profitability—which benefits everyone.

And the data backs it up: 25% of firms that plan in ��«ӰҵAPP have their most profitable year ever, which climbs to over 80% for our most engaged firms. These are businesses that have been around 30–50+ years.

This increase in profitability is the core driver of the intangible improvements that will be seen across the firm including:

• Higher salaries
• Larger bonuses
• Better benefits
• Modern tech
• Office improvements

The first step in any organizational change is ensuring employees understand what’s in it for both the firm and their individual roles.

Value of Planning

To set up your incentives, you’ll need to put a price tag on the value of planning to your organization.

According to the Resource Management Institute, a 5% improvement in utilization can increase profit by $1–2 million in a 100-person firm. And that’s every year it’s maintained going forward.

You should set a goal for your utilization and know what it’s worth in additional profit when you get there. With the lever of planning, it doesn’t cost more to be more efficient—so this is pure bottom-line profit.

For a 100-person firm, the incentive payout might be in the thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, but remember, the benefit is in the millions. Improving efficiency is always a smart investment.

Ideas for Incentives

This isn’t about individuals—it’s about a teamwide culture shift to regain control over work. These incentives should be tracked at the office, department, or team level. Keep the number of tracked groups manageable so results are meaningful and reviewable.

The key to success is to gamify planning. Your incentive goals need to be concrete. Your first two KPI goals should be:

1. At least 75% of total team capacity planned 30 days out, with actual time entries within 20% of plan at month-end to keep incentives aligned with reality. (��«ӰҵAPP has a report to easily track this).
2. A utilization increase target for the team, department, office, or business unit. The first goal should be to increase utilization by at least 1% within six months. Once that goal is achieved, set a 12-month target of 2–3%. This goal should apply only to billable employees, which typically make up 75–82% of staff at most firms.

The results should be tracked quarterly to smooth out one time impacts. Incentives should be paid out quarterly and given the connection to the bottom line, monthly cash prizes or recognition must be given for groups that hit both goals.

Additional bonuses should be layered in for half and full year bonuses:

• Team lunches or wellness rewards
• Leaderboards across teams or offices for internal recognition
• Visibility to leadership in company-wide meetings
• Quarterly utilization goals the whole organization can celebrate

Most importantly, celebrate and reward the teams that win!

The Cost of Not Planning

Lack of planning leads to:

• Late or missed deadlines
• Poor workload distribution
• Late nights or weekend scrambles
• Burnout and turnover

The Bottom Line

You can’t manage what you don’t plan. And people don’t plan just because you tell them to—they plan when it’s good for them.

Design incentives that reward planning, and the system practically runs itself.

Every unplanned hour is a lost opportunity to earn—and a missed chance to manage smarter.

When teams are incentivized to plan their time, they work more predictably, more profitably, and with less stress.

Because planning isn’t just scheduling work—it’s taking care of your people.

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