A study has highlighted a “naive belief” among managers that can end up costing motivated employees—and risk burnout.
Being the employee who always shows enthusiasm at work might seem like the best way to succeed—but new research suggests it can end up backfiring.led by Sangah Bae, professor of management and organizational development at Northeastern University, reveals that managers often give more work to those they believe to be “intrinsically motivated"—even if it works against them.
The findings from a series of studies involving over 4,300 participants across various industries highlights what Bae calls a “naive belief” among managers that employees who enjoy their work will also welcome additional tasks.Bae’s interest in the topic began a decade ago, during her time as a junior analyst, when her manager handed her extra work as she was preparing to leave the office on time for a social outing. “She threw me this report that I needed to get done before I headed out, and for sure it wasn’t going to be done in half an hour,” she said. At the time, Bae prided herself on being committed to her work, but she suspected that the same dedication made her an easy choice when it came to assigning extra work outside of her main duties. A decade later, her research confirmed that suspicion.enjoyed their job . The managers were then asked to whom they would assign additional tasks like event planning and administrative duties. Results showed that 55 percent of managers gave the extra work to the employee they perceived as moreA second experiment placed participants in groups of three, with one acting as a manager and two as employees competing for a small cash bonus. During the task, managers had to assign an extra duty to one employee—knowing it would reduce their chance to win the bonus.“Because managers chose to give this task to employees who were higher in intrinsic motivation, many of these employees actually lost out on their chance to win bonuses,” Bae said, noting that only about 30 percent of the intrinsically motivated employees received the bonus. The researchers attribute this to what they call “motive oversimplification” on the part of management, the logic fallacy that overly simplifies where employees get their motivation from. Many managers assume that enjoyment of core tasks means that the employees will also automatically enjoy any extra tasks assigned to them, and that their enthusiasm will protect them fromWhile managers estimated that extra tasks would reduce job satisfaction by 0.2 points, intrinsically motivated employees actually reported an entire point drop, the study found. Bae emphasizes that most managers do not act from bad intentions, but often rely on quick judgements under pressure, assigning more tasks to those they trust to deliver. But long-term effects can still be damaging. “The employee that is your shortcut, that is your go-to person who seems to be engaged and loving their work, might actually be quietly being burned out,” Bae said. The study suggested some simple ways to fix this, including tracking who received extra assignments as to not overburden them and using online dashboards and task management system to get notified when an employee has been given too much work.
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