Recent research reveals what many have suspected: the pressure on professional service teams has reached critical levels. When 38% of HR professionals report excessive workloads and 41% spend most of their week on admin, something needs to change.
Of course, HR isn’t alone. Across professional services, from consulting to accounting, similar patterns emerge. Resource planners and project managers face mounting pressure to do more with less, relying on outdated tools that add to the problem rather than solve it.
But there's a deeper story here. Behind these numbers lie fundamental questions about how we manage our most valuable resource—our people.
The current state of burnout: by the numbers
The latest data paints a worrying picture of where professional services stand in 2025. While 38% report excessive workloads, even more telling is that 41% are trapped in admin tasks. That's nearly half your team spending their days on manual processes instead of strategic work.
When we dig deeper into utilisation rates, things get even more interesting. Project managers and resource planners are struggling to balance optimal staff utilisation with sustainable workloads. That sweet spot between profitable billable hours and team burnout is getting harder to find.
Here's what it's costing firms:
▪️Teams spending up to 60% more time on admin than necessary
▪️Key talent walking out the door (34% of HR pros are considering leaving within a year)
▪️Critical projects facing delays due to resource misallocation
▪️Rising costs from temporary staff coverage and overtime
Perhaps most concerning is the demand forecast. A third of HR professionals expect these pressures to increase over the next five years. A clear signal that current approaches to resource management aren't sustainable.
But here's what really catches our attention: 55% of HR professionals want to focus more on improving company culture, and 58% want to better support employee development. The desire to make meaningful changes is there. The question is: what's standing in their way?
Why professional services are particularly vulnerable
Professional services firms face unique pressures when it comes to burnout. The business model itself creates challenges that other industries simply don't face.
Let's start with billable hours. They're key to profit, but they create an inherent tension. Teams are under constant pressure to maximise billable time while maintaining quality and meeting tight deadlines. This means resource planners often find themselves walking a tightrope between optimal utilisation and overload.
Similarly, modern clients expect more for less, faster turnaround times, and round-the-clock availability. When you're managing multiple client projects with competing priorities, it's easy to see how teams get stretched thin.
Here’s what's happening in practice:
🚩Resource planners juggle multiple spreadsheets to track availability
🚩Planners promise delivery dates without checking true team capacity
🚩Last-minute project changes force rushed reallocation of staff
🚩Skills gaps appear when key team members are overbooked
The traditional tools aren't helping either. Many firms still rely on manual scheduling processes that eat up valuable time. When 41% of HR professionals report spending most of their week on admin, you can bet resource and project planners face similar challenges.
What makes this particularly tricky for professional services? The expertise factor. Unlike other industries, you can't simply shift work between team members. Each professional brings specific skills and experience that aren't easily interchangeable. When your senior tax specialist is booked on three major projects, you can't just reassign their work to a junior team member.
📖Related reading: Guide to skills based resource allocation
The hidden ripple effects
The thing is, burnout doesn't happen in isolation. When teams hit breaking point, the impact ripples through the entire organisation in ways that aren't always obvious. Project quality often takes the first hit. Even your most talented professionals struggle to maintain standards when they're stretched across too many commitments. Small details get missed, deadlines slip, and the margin for error grows. Before you know it, client satisfaction starts to wobble.
Then there's the knowledge drain. When experienced team members leave due to burnout (and remember, 34% are considering it), they take more than their expertise with them. They take client relationships, project insights, and institutional knowledge that's taken years to build.
That's not something you can quickly replace.
When resource allocation isn't balanced, you'll see rising tension between overworked and underutilised team members, increased resistance to taking on new projects, breakdown in collaboration and knowledge sharing, and growing resentment over perceived scheduling favouritism.
Client relationships suffer too. Even when teams deliver on time, burned-out professionals struggle to maintain the proactive, strategic thinking that clients value. You might be hitting your deadlines, but are you truly delivering your best work?
The financial impact sneaks up on you. It's not just about the obvious costs of recruitment and temporary staff coverage. Think about the hidden costs: projects taking longer than necessary, missed upsell opportunities and the gradual erosion of your firm's reputation for excellence.
Burnout breaking point warning signs
Resource planners and team leaders are uniquely positioned to spot burnout before it becomes a crisis. But you need to know what you're looking for.
Let's start with the obvious red flags in your resource planning:
🚩Multiple projects competing for the same key people
🚩Regular overtime becoming the norm rather than the exception
🚩Increasing pushback on new project assignments
🚩Rising number of last-minute schedule changes
🚩Skills bottlenecks appear more frequently
Your resource planning data tells a deeper story if you know where to look. When utilisation rates start pushing consistently above optimal levels, it's often the first sign of trouble brewing. You might notice growing gaps between planned and actual project hours, while teams spend more time on admin instead of billable work. Project deadline extensions begin to crop up more frequently, and even your typically high performers start showing unexpected drops in productivity.
The warning signs in your technology setup can be just as revealing. Teams stuck managing resources across multiple spreadsheets typically struggle to keep their planning data current. You'll spot them making frequent manual corrections to schedules and having a hard time tracking who's available in real time. Perhaps most costly of all, these outdated systems mean you're constantly missing chances to allocate your team more effectively.
📖Related reading: Outgrown Excel? Here’s how to move to a specialist resource management system.
The resource planning connection
Poor resource allocation and burnout are more closely linked than many realise. When you're working with manual systems or disconnected tools, you're often flying blind. You might think you're optimising resources, but you're actually creating the perfect conditions for burnout.
Resource planners struggle to see true team capacity, skills and availability data spread across multiple systems and you have no clear view of upcoming project demands. Not to mention the constant firefighting and limited ability to forecast and prevent resource clashes.
The data backs this up. When 41% of professionals spend most of their time on admin tasks, something's clearly broken in the process. But here's the interesting part: firms that have modernised their resource planning tell a different story.
We're seeing forward-thinking firms take a smarter approach:
✅Real-time visibility into team capacity and skills
✅Automated scheduling that prevents overbooking
✅Early warning systems for potential resource conflicts
✅Data-driven insights into workload patterns
✅Proactive resource optimisation based on actual availability
The impact? Teams stay fresher, projects run smoother, and everyone gets to focus on what they do best. Plus, resource planners can finally stop spending their days juggling spreadsheets and start adding real strategic value.
Moving towards burnout solutions
Leading firms are moving away from siloed planning tools toward unified platforms that show the whole picture. Software like Retain provides real-time views of team capacity and availability, while clearly tracking skills and certifications. When potential resource conflicts arise, automated alerts flag issues before they become problems. By integrating project and resource planning in one place, firms gain valuable data-driven insights into utilisation patterns.
Technology plays a crucial role, but it's how you use it that matters. The most successful firms take a balanced approach, starting with automating those time-consuming scheduling tasks. They're using AI to suggest optimal resource matches and maintain flexible buffers for unexpected demands. Most importantly, they're setting realistic utilisation targets and deliberately building in time for skills development.
Here's what makes the difference: when resource planning becomes more efficient, everyone benefits. Resource managers can finally step away from admin and focus on strategy. Project managers get the right people when they need them. And most importantly, professionals get workloads that keep them engaged without burning them out.
We've seen this work in practice. Take one of our clients, a mid-sized accounting firm. After modernising their resource planning, the results spoke for themselves. Administrative time dropped by 35%, while project delays decreased by 40%. Team satisfaction scores rose significantly, client feedback improved, and retention rates climbed across key roles.
Ready to learn more about modern resource planning? Our team can show you how leading firms are tackling these challenges. Get in touch for a friendly chat about your specific needs.
Don't wait for burnout to become a crisis in your firm. Book a demo today to see how modern resource planning can help protect your team's wellbeing while improving project delivery.
