Europe’s Hidden Bench Cost: BenchBee to Open its Network Across the Continent in November 2025

In the UK, the average IT consultancy carries around 17% of its workforce on the bench, consultants not currently billed to clients. Internal conversations across the market reveal a basic financial truth: to justify one idle consultant, you need the margin from three fully billable consultants to cover them. That equation holds whether you’re in Manchester or Munich.

And here’s the signal that confirmed what we suspected: this isn’t just a UK problem.

The Same Pattern in Berlin, Warsaw, Madrid, Amsterdam

In recent discussions with consultancies across Germany, Poland, Spain and the Netherlands, the conditions were identical:

• High-value consultants sitting idle for weeks between projects.
• Teams are already structured across borders; a Polish developer working on a German project, a Madrid-based PM coordinating a delivery team spread across London and Bucharest.
• Day rate convergence, particularly in senior roles: multiple consultancies reported that Polish day rates are now approaching or, in some specialist cases, exceeding London pricing due to cross-border demand, especially from Germany.

When rates converge and borders fade, the bench becomes a shared European inefficiency, not a domestic one.

The Market Has Gone European, The Infrastructure Has to Follow

Every consultancy we spoke with had talent and demand spanning multiple countries. What they don’t have is a way to make that capacity visible.

Right now, cross-border hiring between consultancies happens through:

• Slack channels,
• Personal WhatsApp groups,
• Individual relationships between resource managers,
• Manual outreach when desperation peaks.

There is no structured, peer-to-peer network where European consultancies can hire from and monetise each other’s bench without going through agencies or headhunters.

That’s the gap BenchBee exists to close.

European Access Opens November 2025

BenchBee will open access to consultancies across Europe from November 2025.
The platform remains English-first – reflecting how European IT consultancies already operate in delivery and governance.

And here’s the key part:

The first 100 consultancies to join globally retain Founding Member status – permanently.

This isn’t a vanity badge. Founding Members lock in:

• Flat membership pricing fixed for the lifetime of their account,
• Priority visibility in search and matching
• Direct influence over shaping cross-border features and onboarding flows.

This Isn’t About Expansion. It’s About Exposure

Bench pressure isn’t going away. Talent mobility is already cross-border. The only thing missing is a structured peer network that reflects the way European consultancies already operate behind the scenes.

If you want to be among the first 100 consultancies shaping that infrastructure rather than reacting to it, the window is open.

Register your interest to be one of the European Founding Members here.