Junior staff, by definition, are at the early stages of a career, and need one thing above all: the chance to develop and build their skills. Without this, their career (and their livelihood) is at risk. How well skills are built depends upon two key processes. The first is the work assignment system that decides what projects they get to work on (and for what part of the project they are given responsibility). The second is the quality of supervision that they receive while working on these assigned projects.
While the practice leader must ensure that these two processes are working properly, firms differ greatly in how formal these processes are, and on how formal a role the group leader plays.
The Work Assignment System
In some firms, each senior person has the freedom to staff his or her own job from a general pool of junior professionals, while in others, junior professionals tend to work for the same senior people all of the time, becoming either officially or unofficially "their" juniors.
A better model, in our view, is one where all the senior people get together regularly and jointly allocate junior staff to projects, thereby sharing the responsibility to act like a group. They can consider together the trade-offs between keeping people busy, providing the best resources to key clients, providing developmental work experiences, achieving efficiency, and keeping motivation and morale high.
Even where there is no formal authoritative role for the group leader in work scheduling, there is an important informal role of monitoring the pattern of work assignments that juniors are getting. By knowing what is going on, the group leader can have an influence by dropping in on senior colleagues from time to time and saying things like:
"I see you're using Jimmy for the sixth time on this kind of transaction, which makes a lot of economic sense since he's so much up to speed. However, I know Jimmy's keen to learn some new things, and I wondered if, next time you have a transaction like this, you might consider using Mary instead.
"I know she's dying to work with you and would be really committed, since she would be exposed to new things. She would be eager to look good in your eyes. If you'd be willing to agree, you'd really being contributing a lot to the group, since we'd reduce the risk that both Jimmy and Mary might quit to get the work opportunities they're after. Would you be willing to help me out on this?"
Done with enough style and grace, the group leader can have a significant impact on the pattern of work assignments, and hence on motivation, morale, and retention.
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