Discover the state of resource management with insightful statistics. Explore current trends and challenges in optimizing organizational efficiency.
Resource management statistics do more than tell a story – they can shape strategy and inspire success.
So, this year, we decided to reach out to our incredible network of talented resource managers and take the pulse of the profession. Runn’s 2025 State of Resource Management Report is packed with resource management stats to help sector professionals benchmark their maturity and take action to improve.
One thing we noticed is that dealing with change is a huge part of resource management – from rescheduling around scope creep to reprioritizing resources when clashes occur. But, behind the scenes, it feels like things don’t change enough.
Resource management is still often misunderstood and undervalued, RM teams remain under-resourced, and everyone STILL confusing you with HR! Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as they say in France.
However, in our resource management research, we spotted promising signs of change – happening now and on the horizon.
In this article, we're going over the latest resource management statistics – as well as evergreen insights – to see what’s changed in the profession, what still needs work, and how you can raise your game.
In an economic landscape characterized by unpredictable demand, talent supply problems, and financial pressures, it’s no surprise that better capacity planning is the top objective for resource management in 2025, with 27% of respondents citing it as their top priority.
When you add in the 20% who said ‘improving utilization’ and 14% who said ‘strategic workforce planning’, and that’s over half of you using resource management to better align staff supply to client demand.
This isn't a new problem.
In a 2022 report by Deltek, 49% of agency leaders said they were prepared to allocate significant funds for hiring more talent. But even though hiring human resources and employee retention was a high priority, planning those resources was the leading operational challenge for the agencies that took part in the survey.
When describing the challenge, many of them said they struggle with 'knowing I have the right amount of full-time and freelance staff to match my new business pipeline and expected revenue'.
Some things never change!
When exploring the reasons behind this difficulty, Deltek found that while many companies were using resource management technology, in most cases it was dispersed (56%), and only 38% of participants said they used a centralized system.
Roll the clock forward three years and our resource management research revealed the same problem.
When we asked resource managers what the biggest inhibitors are to effective RM in their organization, they resoundingly said ‘outdated tools and manual processes’.
Some 42% of you are struggling with legacy systems that just don’t work. Plus the 31% who voted for ‘siloed departments’ suggests decentralization and lack of cross-departmental collaboration continues to cast a shadow over your efforts.
The next biggest inhibitor was ‘a lack of visibility into resource availability’, which is related to the outdated tools. Using spreadsheets to manage resources (as 58% of do) doesn’t provide the intuitive, real-time availability insights you need, compared to a dedicated resource management platform (as 44% do).
Looking at Deltek’s research, visibility was also one of the biggest challenges for resource managers back in 2022, with 41% of respondents still struggling with visibility into available resources, while even a bigger fraction of the group saying they didn't have enough funding.
The same year, the RMI found a lack of adequate forecasting to be the biggest inhibitor to executing resource management practices effectively (forecasting and capacity planning makes 88% of the problem).
Could lack of investment be the reason why these perennial challenges aren’t getting resolved? Maybe.
Our 2025 research found that, despite the top strategic priorities being to ‘improve resource allocation and scheduling accuracy’ (64%), only 16% had plans to invest in more advanced resource management software this year.
This is a false economy that could be costing businesses more than it saves.
The next top priority in our survey was around utilization rates. 60% of you said you want to ‘increase resource utilization and productivity’.
But caution is important. Good resource managers want to increase utilization, but great resource managers know when to stop.
Overcommitted resources have also been proven to cause project delays. In this context, overcommitted resources indicate a utilization rate of 125%, while the recommended point for successful project delivery usually stops at 80%.
The Resource Management Institute recommends measuring utilization weekly or at least monthly in order to spot and address negative trends early on.
When looking into how businesses calculate their utilization calculation, 72% of professional services businesses count overtime hours as well as hours scheduled.
This is good practice, as overtime has a significant impact on employee morale, and potential burnouts, and it can help you spot under-utilized resources.
However, the ability to do this relies on access to reliable, real-time data for resource management, something our RM statistics show is a challenge.
Only 47% of you say your data is mostly accurate, while 8% don’t trust their data at all. (Without reliable data, it’s no wonder 21% of companies say their forecasting capabilities are not effective!)
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The main problem is that data is inconsistently input and incomplete. This suggests a lack of centralization, both in terms of tech and teams. A centralized resource management platform would provide much-needed data consistency and accuracy.
Not only that, but it would cut down on the 7.5 hours a week that resource managers spend, on average, on reporting.
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Back in 2022, Prosymmetry found 56% of respondents used one or more tools for resource management. Among the features they particularly valued was the ability to automatically forecast skills gaps (62%).
While skills tracking is essential, it isn’t the end goal in itself – you can make this data work harder when you regard it in the context of people's career journeys and goals.
Matching people to projects they’ll enjoy and learn from is also a great way to increase engagement and upskilling resources on the job.
However, the Resource Management Institute found that – although 92% of respondents to their 2022 survey had technology to store skills-related data, 35% of respondents said they don't track project or career interests of delivery personnel. This is a missed opportunity.
What about today, you ask? Well our resource management statistics gathered in 2025 found 58% of you track skills, and 28% of you want to. That leaves just 14% to be convinced of the immense value in terms of matching talent to projects, delivery outcomes, and staff satisfaction.
The value of skilled resource managers cannot be overstated. They save business costs, make sure projects get delivered on time, and, what's even more important, keep all employees happy with their assignments and ensure everyone gets to enjoy that work-life balance.
And the good news is that our resource management statistics find the discipline growing. Over four in five resource management functions have grown or remained stable in 2025, suggesting greater recognition for the benefits it brings to the business.
In fact, 79% of you say at least ‘some people’ or ‘everyone’ understands the importance of resource management.
But resource management is looking for a home. Only 7% of our survey respondents work within a dedicated Resource Management Office, with the rest most likely found in project management or operations.
12% of businesses have resource management responsibility shared across departments, which is not the best way to optimize resourcing.
In order to increase the population of skilled resource managers and prevent the churn of the ones that are already developing the industry, it is crucial for companies to provide clear career path opportunities for resource managers.
After all, it is the scarcity of well-trained resource managers that drives costs up in this field. And it's a good idea to train new resource managers from within, while also providing them with the newest resource management automation technology.
Here's where this conclusion comes from:
Forecasting, planning, and analyzing resources is difficult even for the best resource managers in the game. But without appropriate technology, tools, and team members to support them, even the best RMs will struggle to deliver desired strategic and operational goals.
However, a good tool in the tech stack can make a world of difference:
✅ Advanced capacity planning tools
✅ Visibility into resource availability and skills
✅ Intuitive data visualisation and trends
✅ Automated reporting from real-time data
✅ Centralized skills management
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