There’s no shortage of people who think they do most of their team’s work and wish their bosses would do something about it. A viral post in the r/coworkerstories section of Reddit offered a look at just how many employees feel this way, which should alert managers to the extent of the problem.
The anonymous poster pointed out that they constantly shoulder the majority of the work for the team they working with and said it suits company leadership to pretend not to notice. The depth of others’ reactions and similar complaints pushed the post to wider media coverage. The unexpected resonance should probably get supervisors and managers thinking about whether someone is laboring away like this under your management? And if so, what should you do about it?
The poster, WitnessLongjumping2, originally started out by tracking their time and tasks to assess their efficiency, India’s Economic Times reports. But the results prompted the conclusion that they were actually carrying their colleagues: “I found out I’m doing 70 percent of my team’s work,” the user explained. The extra tasks were many and varied, clearly going beyond the expectations of the person’s duties—from simple things like correcting a co-worker’s typo to more important things like forwarding an email a colleague had failed to send and even managing reports. “I’m a crutch,” the person concluded, and went on to suggest that the moment they stop “carrying” everyone else, “this place limps.”
If the 70 percent wasn’t a shocking enough statistic, when the person confronted their boss with the evidence, the response was unsatisfying. “You’re just really efficient,” the leader said, adding, “I don’t want to mess with a good thing.” Even without knowing the exact details of this company’s work environment, it’s easy to see that this answer smacked of ivory tower syndrome, demonstrating weak leadership and distance from the subordinates’ duties. The message was clear: This is a “you” problem, and if it ain’t broke, there’s no need for the boss to fix it (or pay the overworked person appropriately for their efforts).
Many other users responded to the post, highlighting the irony of management acting like it’s not their problem, and even suggesting actions that the original poster could take. One user, relating a situation in a previous job where they’d also been carrying their team while simultaneously being criticized for mistakes, said they tried simply slowing down to the pace of a slow colleague. Very quickly their manager “realized I had been doing twice the input of the next fastest person.” Other commenters responded with their own stories of how they reacted when they realized they were in similar situations at work.
A common thread among commenters was that many workers who found themselves overdelivering said such situations reflected poorly on the culture of their companies. Anyone working like this should consider “letting it all hit the floor just to see who notices,” one person suggested. Another said that leaving and finding a workplace with a better, inclusive culture that recognizes effort is the best solution.
The viral story comes just after new research from Microsoft highlighted the problem of the “infinite workday,” where technology and shifting norms now allow workplace conversations to continue well outside the traditional 9-to-5 work window, with many managers feeling comfortable initiating job-related conversations late in the evening. The overworking trend is familiar ground, though. Countless pieces of research suggest that not only is it bad for your staff, triggering fatigue and maybe even burnout, but could also weaken your bottom line.
In the breakout Reddit thread, the problem is framed around one worker carrying out a disproportionate amount of their team’s work. That’s not unusual on occasion—depending on the tasks that crop up, sometimes relying on one team member with a particular skill or talent is a good idea at the time. But if an unbalanced workload persists over the long term, it could really harm company morale. That would definitely impact your productivity.
Source – https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/a-reddit-rant-calling-out-uneven-workloads-just-went-viral/91210712