Who Gets Given the Extra Work

Within a team under pressure, the pressure is rarely distributed evenly. It concentrates, and the concentration follows a pattern.

Where it lands

On the reliable. Giving the urgent thing to the person who will definitely deliver is rational for each decision and unjust in aggregate.

On those who cannot say no, which correlates with insecurity, tenure, visa status, and personality rather than with capacity.

On the competent, who are rewarded with more.

On those who do the invisible work, because it does not appear in any workload calculation.

Away from those who have made themselves difficult to ask, which is a rational individual strategy that shifts load onto colleagues.

Why it persists

Each individual allocation is defensible.

The aggregate is never examined, because nobody holds the total picture.

The person absorbing it frequently does not complain, which is why they were chosen.

It is invisible in most systems. Formal allocation may look even while actual load is not.

Managers are frequently unaware, which is not an excuse and is usually true.

The consequences

The most capable people leave first, since they have the most options and the most load.

It is a fairness mismatch as well as a workload one, which compounds the harm.

It punishes competence, which everyone observes and learns from.

It hides the true resourcing gap, because the team is delivering and only one person knows what it costs.

Making it visible

List who is working on what, including the recurring and the invisible.

Count the interruptions, by person, for a week.

Ask who covers absence, and how often it is the same people.

Ask who is the single point of failure for anything.

Look at hours, by person.

Ask the team directly who they think carries the most. They know, and they are usually right.

Correcting it

Cross-train, so the reliable person is not the only option.

Rotate the undesirable work rather than allocating it to whoever objects least.

Cap concentration deliberately. If one person is on three critical paths, that is a risk as well as an injustice.

Support people to say no, which means the manager saying it on their behalf until they can.

Recognise the invisible work, explicitly, so it appears in the picture.

Address the person who is difficult to ask, because tolerating that is what shifts load onto everyone else.

The manager's part

A manager who repeatedly gives the urgent thing to the same person is making a choice, even if it does not feel like one at the time.

Ask, before each allocation, whether this is the third time this month.

Track allocation over a quarter rather than judging it case by case, which is the only level at which the pattern is visible.

This is the single most correctable fairness problem in most teams, and it is correctable by one person paying attention to the aggregate.

The quarterly allocation review

The pattern is only visible in aggregate, which is why it persists.

List every significant piece of work allocated in the quarter and to whom.

Count by person.

Add the recurring and invisible work, which will not appear in any allocation system.

Add who covered absence, and how often.

Add who was interrupted most, from a week's log.

Look at the distribution. It is usually more concentrated than anyone realised, including the manager who made every individual decision reasonably.

Correct deliberately over the next quarter, and check again. This is the single most correctable fairness problem in most teams.

Saying no on someone's behalf

The people who most need to decline are least able to.

A manager can decline for them, which is frequently the only way it happens.

"She is at capacity; ask me and I will find someone" costs the manager nothing and protects the person entirely.

Do it visibly, so the team sees that capacity limits are real.

Then find someone else, so the work still happens.

Over time, model it enough that people can do it themselves, which requires them to have seen it done without consequence several times.