profile, and detailed job duties for each staff position in the firm. Ill-defined roles and responsibilities leave ambiguity about what is expected of professionals at each level, as well as conflicting titles and compensation structures. Having defined roles and responsibilities properly sets expectations as to the appropriate skills required at each level.

The roles and responsibilities should be clearly linked to the organization structure (practice, firm, specialty group) as outlined in Chapter 9, as well as the levels mentioned earlier. Inconsistencies will make staff management, promotions, and appraisals unnecessarily difficult, case-by-case challenges for firm management.

The following attributes should be part of each level definition:

Position title

Role within the organization (position on the organization chart)

Reporting relationships (direct reports supervised by this position and where this position reports)

Job requirements: professional skills, educational background, work experience, company tenure

Documentation of day-to-day, ongoing responsibilities, organized by area (e.g., client work, firm operations work, marketing/business development, firm direction setting, staff management)

Priorities for responsibilities, how time should be allocated

Objective and subjective measurements of success in the role

Promotion criteria

Success criteria or objectives

This information can also be used by internal or external recruiters as a hiring specification, as well as provide the evaluation criteria during the annual employee review process. The information also serves to emphasize skills required for advancement at each level and expectations for professional staff as they progress through their career with the firm. Exhibit 10.2 outlines the typical career responsibility progression in a professional services firm.

Promotion Criteria. For each level in the firm, the criteria for promotion to that level should be outlined. These criteria are most often related to knowledge, capabilities, and experience of the staff, as well as other factors such as project types or tenure. The specific requirements will vary according to firm type, size, service offering, and existing customs and practices. In every case, the firm will benefit by the perception (and reality) that an objective standard exists for promotion. This sends the message that promotions are based on merit and establishes a level playing field for staff competing for

Consultant

Document processes Gather data Perform

analyses

Associate

Gather data Perform

analyses Lead client/ consultant teams

Manager

Structure work effort

Manage projects

Assess staff

Lead client teams

Oversee analyses

Partner

Establish new clients

Maintain existing client relationships

Develop proposals

Sell engagements

Develop new service offerings

Steer overall direction of firm

Exhibit 10.2 Typical Career Responsibility Progression for Professional Staff

advancement. The promotion and appraisal process (discussed later in this chapter) should also establish what levels in the firm are responsible for determining when promotions are handed out (e.g., principals are responsible for determining consultants promoted to senior consultant).

Compensation* A range of compensation (base salary, bonus, other perquisites, and benefits) should be established for each level. Inevitably, compensation information is shared within the firm as well as outside. Compensation equity within a role will help minimize any dissatisfaction in the ranks of the professional staff. A set of policies regarding compensation will also reduce the amount of human resources effort that goes into setting compensation for each individual staff member.

It is critical for the firm to define the preceding four parameters. Having a well-defined career track will send a message that objective criteria are used to evaluate, promote, and compensate professional staff. The work of defining these elements will be recovered many times over in reduced human resources effort for appraisal, promotion, compensation, and hiring decisions. Firm recruiting efforts will be more competitive. The best professionals are attracted to firms that have clearly established tracks for advancement, and firms with fair, objective promotion and compensation systems retain those professionals.

A number of other considerations must be accounted for in designing the professional services firm organization structure and career tracks. These considerations are outlined next.

Parallel Career Tracks for Nonpartners

The first area is differentiating partner track staff and nonpartner-track staff. The skill sets required of staff in a professional services firm change significantly over the course of their progression from consultant to partner. Consultants are rewarded for data gathering, analysis, and individual effort. Partners are expected to perform in very different endeavors: direction setting, client relationships, sales, and business development.

Because of this disparity in requirements and expected skills, often firms find that high-performing consultants and individual contributors are ill suited for (or uninterested in) performing the duties and expectations of a firm partner. This phenomenon can be driven by personality, work style, interest, and capability of the individual staff member and means that firms are forced to make a choice: Should high-performing professional staff who show little affinity for the skills required of a partner be provided with a different professional track for advancement?

There are a variety of benefits to providing a parallel track. Depending on the type of work being sold by the firm, the existence of subject matter experts who can be used for specific engagements can be a very powerful tool in the firms business development arsenal. Furthermore, an individual with proven project execution skills can be parachuted into difficult projects or can be counted on to manage projects and minimize overall delivery risk, freeing business-development-oriented partners to move on to more leveraged activities. A proven, high-quality senior level resource can be of immense help to the firm.

On the other hand, a specialized and rare skill can quickly fall out of favor with clients, leaving the firm with an expensive, difficult-to-retrain, and un-billable resource to manage. Such individuals can also become disgruntled with their career progress within the firm. If the parallel career track and advancement for their role is ambiguous, they may feel that they have been relegated to a backwater within the firm. This situation may eventually affect their job performance, and they may leave on their own.

The decision for parallel career tracks for individual producers or subject matter experts depends greatly on firm size, structure, type of work being sold, and client needs. While there is no general methodology for determining what is best for a specific firm, what is certain is that firms should make a clear-cut decision on whether they plan to support alternate (nonpartner-track) career paths. Firms that find this issue difficult are usually the ones that allow nonpartner-track individuals to stay with the firm but do not provide clear roles, responsibilities, and advancement paths for them. This puts the firm and the individual in the worst of both worlds.

While recruiting and retention for firms are covered in Chapter 11, recruiting is mentioned here because there are strong linkages between career track development and recruiting. One of the most important factors in selecting a