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If you love your job, watch out! Your manager may be about to pile more work on you. New research shows that managers consistently overload their most motivated employees. And in doing so, risk burning out the very people they rely on most.
Why it matters:
Organizations depend on motivated employees, yet new research reveals a troubling pattern: the more employees appear to love their work, the more additional tasks managers assign to them. While new tasks may be welcomed by some employees, over time, this creates an unequal distribution of labor that quietly erodes the very motivation that made those employees stand out, raising turnover risk, reducing job satisfaction, and undermining organizational commitment.
- Managers in one study allocated extra tasks to more motivated employees 74–81% of the time.
- Intrinsically motivated employees assigned disproportionate additional tasks reported lower job satisfaction, weaker organizational commitment, and higher turnover intentions.
- The bias persisted across six consecutive days in the longitudinal study, with managers choosing the more motivated employee on 69% of occasions
How we know:
Six pre-registered studies spanning field surveys, interactive lab experiments with real financial stakes, and a six-day longitudinal design were conducted. Hundreds of real managers across 27–37 industries participated. In a key study, managers were paired with employees whose actual motivation and burnout data had already been collected, allowing a direct comparison between what managers predicted and what employees actually experienced. Four supplemental studies and two theory-driven intervention tests were also conducted.
What the researchers found:
- Managers prefer to assign additional tasks to employees they perceive as more intrinsically motivated—a pattern the authors call motive oversimplification.
- Managers assumed that enjoying one’s main work means an employee will also enjoy unrelated tasks and is less likely to burn out from them.
- Managers overestimated how much motivated employees would enjoy the extra work and underestimated their burnout risk, while doing the reverse for less motivated colleagues.
- Disproportionate task allocation eroded job satisfaction and organizational commitment and increased turnover intentions among intrinsically motivated employees.
What this means:
- For managers: Enthusiasm is not a buffer against burnout. The instinct to assign extra work to motivated employees is understandable. However, it consistently backfires and risks losing your most engaged team members.
- For HR leaders: Build workload equity checks into manager training. Disproportionate task allocation is a retention risk that accumulates quietly and is rarely flagged until it’s too late.
- For organizations: Motivated employees are a competitive advantage — but only if they are protected from the very bias their motivation creates. Structural safeguards matter as much as individual manager awareness.
Now what:
- Bundle task allocation decisions: When managers assign multiple tasks at once rather than one at a time, unequal distribution patterns become visible and the bias significantly decreases.
- Train managers on the burnout blind spot: Informing managers that intrinsically motivated employees are more, not less, susceptible to burnout from unrelated tasks may reduce biased allocation to chance levels.
- Track tasks distribution: Watch out for feedback from those who receive additional tasks over time and flag imbalances early in team check-ins or workload reviews.
- Pilot workload equity audits: Take a holistic view of workloads in high-performing teams where motivated employees may be quietly absorbing a disproportionate share of undesirable work.
