Three low-cost interventions that significantly reduce this corrosive pattern—and boost retention.
Engaged employees provide organizations with a valuable competitive advantage. Research consistently shows they are more productive and significantly less likely to leave than less engaged colleagues. It’s why organizations invest so heavily in building an engaged workforce.
But what if those investments are being quietly undermined by a common, well-intentioned managerial habit? Our new research identifies a hidden cost that quietly erodes engagement returns from the inside, and it starts with a deceptively simple question: When unexpected work lands on a manager’s desk, who do they ask to do it? We find that the most motivated employees are being systematically overburdened by extraneous tasks—far more than their less motivated colleagues. And it’s making them like their jobs less. We walk you through our findings to help you to spot the misunderstandings many middle managers hold when it comes to assigning new tasks and identify simple interventions you can run with your managers to help them make fairer assignments so your stars can stay invested in what they love most: their core work. At a time when global engagement has fallen to its lowest point in years, the sharpest decline since the Covid-19 lockdowns, costing an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity, organizations can’t afford to overlook a problem hiding in plain sight. The False Assumptions Powering Work Assignments In 10 studies with more than 4,300 managers and employees, we examined how managers allocate the additional tasks that fall outside a worker’s core responsibilities and what powers that decision-making. We found that managers disproportionately assigned extra work to intrinsically motivated employees, those who find genuine value and pleasure in their work—and the very people organizations work hardest to recruit and retain. In one six-day study, we found that managers assigned 69% of additional tasks to their more intrinsically motivated employees, even when other employees were equally strong performers and had similar tenures. The instinct feels reasonable: These employees are enthusiastic, capable, and seem willing. But in assigning additional tasks to these employees, we found that managers are operating on two faulty assumptions. First, they assume that if an employee loves their core work, they’ll also enjoy any additional work. Second, managers believe that loving one’s job protects employees from burnout, making such employees more resilient than their less motivated colleagues. However, intrinsic motivation is task-specific. An employee who finds client presentations rewarding doesn’t necessarily enjoy reorganizing files or serving on committees. When we surveyed employees about receiving extra work, we found that when self-motivated employees are pulled away from their primary work, their drop in enjoyment was more than three times larger than that of their less-motivated colleagues when they’re called away for an extra task. Here’s why that matters: Your motivated employees are already investing heavily in what they love. When you assign them additional tasks they don’t find rewarding, you’re pulling them away from what they actually enjoy while adding to their workload. Beyond the drop in engagement, we found that disproportionate extra assignments can also hurt performance on main tasks. In another study, we divided 306 participants into groups of three, one serving as a manager and two as their employees. The managers chose which employee doing a paid data-entry task would be interrupted to complete a tedious side task that did not count toward a performance bonus. The more self-motivated worker was selected 74% of the time, hurting that person’s main-task performance and reducing their odds of earning the bonus. The very employees managers were trying to leverage ended up penalized and their work suffered. A Better Way to Allocate Tasks However, there is a better way to assign tasks. We tested what would happen if additional work was distributed more equitably. Employees who found value in their work were told they would either receive additional tasks at the rate managers in our studies actually preferred or at an equal rate with their colleague . Those in the manager-preferred-rate group reported significantly lower job satisfaction and higher turnover intentions than those in the equal allocation group. And crucially, distributing tasks more evenly did not hurt less motivated employees. Their satisfaction and commitment remained unchanged whether they did 30% of extra tasks or 50%. In other words, the current pattern is generating unnecessary costs among the employees organizations most want to keep, and correcting it comes at no expense to anyone else. This dynamic is not structural. It is behavioral, rooted in managers’ genuine, well-meaning beliefs that motivated workers will enjoy extra tasks without getting burned out. This means that it is also straightforward to fix. We developed and tested three low-cost interventions you can run with your managers to significantly reduce this overburdening pattern: 1. Track task assignments. Leaders should encourage managers to keep a simple record of who gets assigned additional work, such as a spreadsheet, a running list, or brief notes after each decision. The key is to make managers aware of their own tendencies. Most managers in our studies had no idea they were distributing work so unevenly. 2. Batch assignment decisions. In one study, we found that managers who assigned multiple tasks at once rather than making isolated, one-off decisions were much more likely to distribute work equitably. Where feasible, encourage your managers to group assignment decisions: Can they be allocated quarterly or monthly? This simple action can make distribution naturally more equitable. 3. Update beliefs about burnout. Even employees who love their jobs have limits. Loving one’s work does not create immunity to burnout, especially when the additional tasks are ones they don’t find rewarding. In our research, simply informing managers that intrinsic motivation does not protect employees against burnout led to more equitable allocation decisions. None of these interventions require expensive programs or large-scale change initiatives. They improve outcomes for intrinsically motivated employees without harming team performance or others’ satisfaction. It’s worth noting that our studies assume that additional tasks add to employees’ workload in ways they didn’t choose and don’t find rewarding. However, if intrinsically motivated employees view certain assignments as developmental opportunities , the negative effects we document may be reduced. For this reason, you may also consider coaching your managers to consider whether some extra tasks may be used as growth opportunities, and to frame them accordingly, while still making decisions which are equitable to all. … Organizations encourage employees to express what they find meaningful about their jobs. But if managers then use that information to disproportionately assign additional work to engaged employees, the very engagement you are investing in begins to erode. For senior leaders, these findings identify a common problem that can be easily corrected to protect engagement, strengthen retention, and sustain performance. The employees being overburdened are the engaged people who find genuine value in their work—the ones you have worked hardest to recruit and retain. The solution is not to stop valuing intrinsic motivation. It is to stop over-relying on it as a criterion for assigning additional work, and to equip managers across the organization with the awareness and tools to distribute work more fairly. It is a small intervention that protects a much larger investment.
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