Bench time
Bench time is the share of a delivery role's planned billable hours that no client account is consuming. It equals the utilization target minus actual utilization: a designer planned at 70% and billing 50% carries 20 points of bench, paid at fully-burdened cost every month it persists.
Some bench is deliberate. Hiring the next seat before the pod is full means carrying bench for a quarter, and that is cheaper than losing an account to a late delivery.
Bench that nobody planned is a sales problem showing up in the delivery accounts. If the pipeline cannot fill the seats already paid for, the next hire adds cost without adding revenue.
Covered in depth
Agency utilization rate: the target, how to calculate it, and why 100% is a warning signNot sure which of these is capping you?
Six questions, two minutes, and the diagnostic names the one constraint worth working on first.