UK tech consultancies are trapped in a paradox that’s costing billions. While major consultancies announce mass layoffs, new analysis reveals that £3.06 billion worth of IT expertise sits idle on company benches each year. At the same time, 81% of UK businesses face critical skills shortages, costing the economy £4.4 billion annually.
BenchBee, the UK’s first talent-sharing platform for consultancies, says the sector is stuck in a hire-or-fire loop that no longer works. It’s calling for a ‘better way’, where firms share skilled professionals instead of hoarding them during booms and cutting them during downturns. The model, it argues, highlights a deeper flaw in how businesses access talent.
"The biggest challenge today isn't a lack of talent; it’s a lack of visibility and access to the talent." says Founder Hassen Hattab. "Across the UK, thousands of specialists are fully employed but benched (waiting between projects), invisible to the companies that need them most”.
The numbers reveal the scale of waste. Industry analysis shows a typical mid-sized consultancy loses £15.3 million annually to bench inefficiency, paying consultants who could be solving urgent problems elsewhere in the market. By 2030, this digital skills gap is forecast to drain £27.6 billion from the UK economy.
This hidden-talent crisis, he argues, is one of the most overlooked inefficiencies in the UK economy. "While government initiatives like the Chancellor's Listing Taskforce aim to attract overseas talent, we're failing to unlock the expertise already here in the system," says Hattab. "We don't have a skills shortage in the UK, we’re just not sharing talent”.
The UK consulting sector is facing a perfect storm
Business investment growth is forecast to fall to 1.6% in 2025 (down from 4.8%), while GDP stalled over the summer, with even the Big Four cutting back and scaling down in response to slowing demand.
At the same time, more than 180,000 UK tech workers have been laid off in 2025. 50,000 of them are linked to AI implementation. Yet those same specialists often have the exact skills employees now struggle to replace.
“It’s a paradox,” says Hattab. “We’re both shedding talent and struggling to find it. The system is broken, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s a crucial piece of the puzzle being overlooked, the talent we already have but fail to fully utilise.”
The Hire-or-Fire trap
For decades, companies have faced an impossible trade-off:
- Permanent staff offer reliability and cultural fit but lock in high fixed costs.
- Freelancers provide flexibility but bring inconsistent quality and limited accountability.
The result? Businesses either carried costly excess staff or swayed between hiring sprees and layoffs, a cycle that wastes money, morale, and momentum.
The ‘flexible workforce’ promised a fix but delivered new issues, patchy screening, inconsistent standards, and a lack of trust. However, a new option of sharing talent is emerging, offering a smarter alternative, balancing capacity without sacrificing quality or people.
A Better Way: From Competition to Collaboration
Rather than competing for scarce hires, innovative consultancies are seeing other company's staff as a useful asset, not competition, and. embracing talent sharing.
By sharing talent between vetted consultancies, companies now have the flexibility to access skilled specialists from other organisations when needed. It allows organisations to right-size their workforce, monetise bench time, and unlock hidden expertise, turning idle capacity into productive collaboration.
When one company has engineers on the bench, another facing a deadline can borrow that expertise instantly, keeping teams productive, projects moving, and people employed.
“This isn’t about replacing permanent staff or competing with freelancers. It’s about giving organisations a reliable, flexible, and accessible workforce” says Hassen Hattab. “Collaboration, not competition, is how companies will close the skills gap and rebuild flexibility for the future.”
Consultancies adopting this collaborative model are already seeing measurable performance gains and long-term resilience.
