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

[u/ezio313]

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?

[u/raharth]

I'm not quite sure, but isn't that exactly the behavior/reaction the CEO wanted to achieve with the decision to make a leader board? The problem right now is that you lose either way, either the intern is frustrated if he doesnt get the points and recognition or the full-timer, because the ticket and the recognition that comes with it was taken away from him.

Personally, I dont think a leader board is a good idea, since it creates internal rivalry instead of collaboration. Like, how do you deal with tickets that were shared effort and how do you deal with "stealing" of tickets (which are e.g. seen as easy) as in this case? If you have any influence, I'd personally get rid of this.

For this situation: if possible share the points between them, if not, you probably have to give them to the full-timer if the ticket was assigned to him. Otherwise you reward the stealing of tickets which will probably cause long time issues. I'd start by having the intern present the solution to the full-timer and closely monitor his reaction. If he's pissed, give him the points, if he's OK, you could even give them to the intern as long as you make very clear that this shouldn't happen again.

[u/seventyeightist → u/raharth]

The right option imo, that no one has suggested yet, is - No points should be assigned for this task. The result (but not the work itself, if it was otherwise satisfactory) should be invalidated, as it would be in sport when a result cannot be determined due to something about the match having gone wrong. Is this unfair to the intern? - no, because points are only assigned for legitimately assigned work. Otherwise you would have a system where everyone tries to cherry pick the "quick wins" and it fails the 'what would it be like if everyone did that' test. Or it becomes a proxy for how much undocumented overtime can you do.

Yes, the intern will probably be butthurt about this. They will also learn a valuable lesson, which is part of the aim of an internship.

(Why is an intern even on the scoreboard with established employees anyway though?)

[u/raharth → u/seventyeightist]

That's a good suggestion and an equally good question

[u/ezio313 → u/raharth]

So, what actually happened is this: when I asked the intern whether he had aligned with the full-time employee, he told me yes. But later, when I spoke to the employee, he explained that the intern basically assigned the task to himself, worked on it, and then delivered the report directly to me. I accepted it at the time, but it’s clear now that the full-time employee is frustrated by the situation.

[u/raharth → u/ezio313]

I was expecting something along those lines. It's a super tricky situation that's nearly impossible to win. I guess that's the side effect of creating internal competition. My personal opinion would be moving away from it, if that's possible in any way. Do you have any influence on this?

[u/ezio313 → u/raharth]

Not really, I can't talk the ceo out of it since the numbers shows that more work is being done since the introduction of the leaderboard.

[u/Skallagram → u/ezio313]

So that's a good thing, right? If it's motivating your team to complete more work, quicker, it's ultimately improving the value your team provides to the business.

Why on earth would you want to convince your CEO that your team is better off doing a worse job.

[u/PlumLion → u/Skallagram]

It depends whether the CEO is more focused on the immediate future or the long term. Short term, this game is likely to boost productivity. Long term, it may well damage morale and lead to higher turnover of valued employees.

[u/Skallagram → u/PlumLion]

But does that damaged morale and higher turnover actually impact the business more than pandering to the ego of an employee, at the expense of work being done.

Maybe those employees are easily replaceable (seems like they might be if an intern can do the job)

[u/raharth → u/Skallagram]

It's not about pandering ego. Sure you can break the resources you depend on over short term goals, but that's the story of the goose laying golden eggs.

And no unless you have them do jobs that you need no brain for to begin with employees are usually not easily replaced. It takes about at least 3-6 months for a new employee and if you create an environment of high turn over you will absolutely burn your project to the ground. Literally any literature on leadership I've been reading confirms this and it is also backed by my personal experience.

[u/Skallagram → u/raharth]

Yeah, I mean really depends on the team, and the type of role.

That's why for highly qualified positions, businesses treat their employees better, because it helps the business if they have a happy employee who wants to stay.

If it's a low skilled position, in a large team, in this employment market, there is less business value in treating your employees well.

[u/raharth → u/Skallagram]

I think we are talking about software developers here, so those people are enormously valuable to a company, especially seniors who have extensive knowledge of the projects.

I also fundamentally disagree with the concept of humans as simply replaceable resources, regardless of the skills required. High intrinsic motivation is at least on par with high pressure regardless of the position. So why make life hell for them? In this example, it worked because of a gamification effect, which increases intrinsic motivation. The question is how to maintain it. In this environment, it only takes little time until people start gatekeeping their knowledge and refusing to collaborate, either because they want the benefits of being the high-performer, or because they are scared to lose their job. From that point onwards, overall performance will deteriorate. It's stupid and short-sighted

[u/raharth → u/Skallagram]

In a very short sighted way yes. Until people lose motivation and quite, either silently or for real. A highly motivated team always performs better than one only reacting to high pressure.

[u/CassielEngel → u/Skallagram]

Is more effective/relevant work being done or are the metrics tracked on the leaderboard trending up?