A presentation still needs to be made, a new colleague trained or a project group staffed. Who do you ask? Chances are you choose that one employee who is always enthusiastic. They won't mind, and they can handle it. It sounds sensible, but it often backfires. New research shows that it is precisely your most engaged people who quietly become overloaded this way, and that they are more likely to leave as a result. In this article, you will read how that happens and what you can do about it.
The enthusiasm penalty
Researchers Kaitlin Woolley (Cornell University) and Sangah Bae (Northeastern University) investigated how managers distribute extra tasks. They published their studies in 2026 in the journal Organization Science and wrote an article about them in Harvard Business Review (HBR; Organization Science).
What did they find? Extra work mainly goes to the people who are most motivated for their own work. In one of the studies, 69% of the extra tasks ended up with them, even when their performance and length of service were the same as their colleagues'. And it happens often: 76% of the managers surveyed hand out extra work at least once a month (Cornell).
Woolley sums it up like this: "Enthusiasm should not be treated as an infinite resource."
Two assumptions that don't hold
Why do managers keep choosing the same people? According to the researchers, two assumptions play a role:
- "Someone who enjoys their work will enjoy extra work too." But motivation belongs to a task, not to a person. Someone who is absorbed in customer conversations doesn't automatically enjoy taking the minutes of the project group. Among motivated employees, enjoyment of work even fell more than three times as much because of a side task as among their colleagues.
- "Someone who is motivated won't burn out so quickly." That isn't true either. Enjoying your work doesn't protect you against too much work.
Motivated employees who were given more than their share of the extra jobs were less satisfied and thought about leaving more often. For their less motivated colleagues, a fair or unfair distribution made hardly any difference. So you lose precisely the people you most want to keep.
Why you don't see it coming
Engaged employees are bursting with energy, feel strongly connected to their work and are completely absorbed in it. That makes it look as if they can handle anything. Other research in HBR, a large analysis of 515 studies on work stress, shows that a lot of work can even go together with high work engagement (HBR). So the damage stays invisible for a long time, until someone is suddenly burnt out or hands in their notice.
This is also where the difference between being engaged and being addicted to your work lies. An engaged employee works hard because the work gives energy. Someone who keeps getting work that gives no energy but does take time and attention slowly shifts from engaged to exhausted. Also read the difference between a workaholic and an engaged employee and help, I'm too engaged!.
What we see in practice
Paul van Heeringen of IMPACT on the Job recognises the pattern immediately. Engaged people are the first to volunteer when there is a new job, and you are happy to give it to them. After all, it is often something fun or interesting. But that is exactly where two risks lie. Engaged employees themselves find it hard to say no: a new job feels like appreciation, they want to perform and they are optimistic about what they can handle. So they sometimes overreach themselves. And if it concerns fun, visible jobs, it can start to rankle with colleagues that these always go to the same people, while they are left with the less rewarding work.
AI adds another layer. The AI enthusiasts in a team do their normal work, and learn and experiment with new tools on top of that. The whole team benefits, but it costs them time and energy. So it is precisely with them that it pays to look consciously at what else they can fit in.
How to share extra work more fairly
Fixing this is fairly easy, and it costs next to nothing.
- Keep track of who gets what. For a month, write down who gets which extra task. Most managers are shocked by the pattern they then see.
- Distribute extra work in one go. Anyone who hands out tasks one by one as they come up automatically chooses the quickest yes. Collect jobs and distribute them consciously, for example in the team meeting.
- Ask what gives someone energy. Don't look at who is most enthusiastic, but at who would enjoy this specific task. That may well be someone else.
- Protect your top performers' core work. They get their energy from their own work, and that is also where they add the most value.
Look team by team
An average across the whole organisation doesn't show this overload. You only see it when you look per team at where high engagement goes together with high workload. With the Employee Engagement Survey by Leiders.nl, you map that out, together with how employees experience leadership. That way you see where your engaged people need extra support before they drop out.
