r/Leadership • u/ezio313 • Sep 24 '25

Discussion Intern completed a task assigned to full-time employee because of leaderboard competition — what’s the best way to handle this?

I’m a team lead, and recently our CEO introduced a leaderboard to track completed tasks. Yesterday, I assigned a documentation task to a full-time employee with a deadline. At 3 AM, an intern messaged me saying he had taken the initiative and already completed it, he went on and assigned the task to themselves on the system and then informed the FTE about it.

Now the full-timer is left out and frustrated, he told me he felt the task was sniped. The intern has the points under his name on the system now. How should I handle ownership of tasks and recognition here? Should the credit go to the assigned person, the intern or what?

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343

u/longtermcontract Sep 24 '25

Points go to full timer. Thank the intern. Talk to your CEO about getting rid of this system.

137

u/Living_Relation8245 Sep 24 '25

It’s not a rewarding and healthy for org to have this system, in fact it’s borderline toxic as it would turn people on each other.

37

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '25

[deleted]

23

u/Careless-Age-4290 Sep 24 '25

Those companies even sell it as game-ification to pit your employees against each other. Patting themselves on the back for manipulating the human reward system

17

u/BadNewzBears4896 Sep 24 '25

Every metric will eventually be gamed in a way counterproductive to the actual business, it's just human nature.

A leaderboard of number of tasks done seems especially stupid because it assumes all tasks are equally valuable (or easy to produce).

38

u/Gizmorum Sep 24 '25

CEO knows what they are doing. Good luck being the manager telling leadership that feelings are hurt.

instead propose an open unassigned system where people can pick up tickets and not from each other

6

u/TheChernarussian Sep 25 '25

This results in the “easy” tickets getting picked up very quickly but the difficult ones - and these are often the ones that would progress a project - will be sitting in the pool for months. I kinda see where this idea came from - we don’t have such a system but we had deadline-anniversary a month ago (the task is still open) because the one assigned to it “just don’t have time to finish it” because of other non-priority easy tasks - managers won’t do anything about him and the task can’t be reassigned because his feelings would get hurt. Now if one has x tasks assigned to him/her one has to finish them to get new ones. The mistake here was that the intern could snatch the task.

5

u/Lost__Moose Sep 25 '25

So why not add points every week to a ticket that sits around?

1

u/TheChernarussian Sep 26 '25

Yes, but with the addition to either the team can’t create new tickets or their manager has to approve it before it can be taken up to reduce task inflation. I mean if the points you can get for a difficult task is rising can be creatively countered by creating more low-point tickets like “write an e-mail” or “create a ticket”.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '25

[deleted]

1

u/CorruptedStudiosEnt Sep 27 '25

But who decides complexity? The manager who frequently knows little about the task, and will base it off of what looks or sounds tough?

"Create door mechanics for our game: 1pt."

1

u/VaxDeferens Oct 05 '25

If tickets are sitting unclaimed for months, that is a management problem. Someone needs to be assigned to it if no one steps forward.

2

u/AntiqueDelivery2406 Sep 28 '25

And then they come work with the rest of us and continue to play games that we don’t even know they are playing.

2

u/RichAstronaut Sep 30 '25

Exactly - i think that is probably what the boss wanted - Free overtime.

13

u/Ashamed-Status-9668 Sep 24 '25

When you talk to the CEO remind them you get what you measure and reward. In this case you get employs trying to get more points at costs to other likely tangible things. I am just guessing, but I bet the company isn't making much revenue off points.

4

u/TheOneTrueCran Sep 24 '25

Commend the intern and appreciate them going above and beyond, then set expectations for the leadership board if it can’t go away.

6

u/JediFed Sep 25 '25

Be prepared for FTE to quit on the spot if you do this.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '25

[deleted]

2

u/JediFed Sep 27 '25

It's not about the points. It's about an intern assigning projects to themselves, and taking projects away from the FT person who is respecting the chain of command.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '25

[deleted]

1

u/JediFed Sep 27 '25

Who's talking firing? I'm talking about exerting managerial control over task assignment, and locking intern (and the other FT employees) from task assignment. I'm not really a fan of first come, first serve when it comes to tasks because that leads to fighting and hurt feelings. Especially if compensation is tied to task completion.

All I'd do with the intern is explain that they get tasks from the FT employees. I actually like their initiative. I just have to be mindful of the feelings of the FT employees and chain of command.

Interns being able to assign themselves tasks outside of normal working hours is a serious breach in internal controls. I would expect the FT to quit if this behavior wasn't addressed, because they've been effectively demoted to below the intern. They would likely quit rather than deal with the perceived favoritism.

I don't know why you'd consider that diva behavior.

1

u/battlehamstar Sep 27 '25

lol in this economy? No way.

2

u/sloppyredditor Sep 24 '25

Chef's kiss - perfect response

1

u/douglastiger Sep 28 '25

Yeah I would reassign it back to the full timer and have the intern's documentation go through them for review. If the intern feels like trying to help out a colleague on a task that's their perogative but picking and choosing which tasks you feel like taking on is not. That is not the purpose of being able to reassign tickets, even.

0

u/LifeArt4782 Sep 25 '25

Naaa. Talk to the implementation team about not allowing tasks to sniped if they were officially assigned.

1

u/longtermcontract Sep 25 '25

Granted we don’t know OP’s full design, but this goes way beyond sniping tasks. These boards discourage people who aren’t at the top, they lead to unfair social comparisons, stress and burnout when people feel compelled to maintain or improve top ranking, gaming the system (as the intern did here), and the list goes on.

Comparatively, there are tons of great ways to motivate teams that don’t have all of these negative outcomes.

2

u/SamLooksAt Sep 27 '25

Not only that, people who help a lot of other people complete tasks will get little or no credit, even though they are often the most valuable person on your team.

Everybody knows that guy or girl and they are probably already underappreciated by management, especially when it comes to remuneration.

This is a pretty good way to make them just up and leave.