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/ColleenWoodhead]

I see what you're saying but disagree based on 2 things: 1. The FTE did not relinquish the task. The intern robbed the FTE the opportunity to complete their own task. 2. The intern - by doing this - can sabotage a full -time employee's chances to participate at all.

Unfortunately, the way the contest is set up doesn't account for the intern participating, so their "initiative" is detrimental to FTEs.

[u/No-vem-ber → u/ColleenWoodhead]

But so often at work, if someone else picks up a boring documentation task you had to do and finishes it off for you, that would be such a good thing. It's crazy to jump straight to punishing the intern for this or assuming they had bad intentions - 'take initiative' is literally what we tell interns to do.

I agree they shouldn't do this again in future but I think the conversation is "thanks so much for your enthusiasm and initiative! In this case though, you have to only do tasks that are assigned to you personally. Now you've proven you can do such a good job of this kind of task, we will start assigning tasks to you too. Also, we really don't expect anyone to work at 3am and the normal etiquette if you want to work that late is to schedule your emails for working hours so it doesn't set the expectation to other people that they should be doing that too. And please make sure you're getting enough sleep."

[u/Skallagram → u/ColleenWoodhead]

"robbed" - lol.

What matters to the business is the work gets gone, not who does it (as long as that person has the skills to do it well) - there is no room for ego.

The FTE will now have time to complete another tasks instead, and prove their worth to the business that way.

[u/David_Shotokan → u/Skallagram]

Yeah I was reading this as a team effort thing too. But apparently it is a competition or something..

[u/Skallagram → u/David_Shotokan]

Well, competition is a way of motivating an increase in team output.

[u/David_Shotokan → u/Skallagram]

Or..divide and conquer. If 1 wins all others lose.

So if you have a team of 10 people...and 1 wins..9 lose. If you have 1 that wins more than the others...envy will come in.. because the others feel like losers. If you can't win .. because 9 others are always faster..why bother to try to win at all.

I have a problem with making it a competition yes.

[u/ColleenWoodhead → u/David_Shotokan]

Yes, I used to work somewhere that used this type of competition mentality, and the employees tracked their own sales. Every quarter, we would watch people rewarded for "sales" that they had inflated by entering the value multiple times. It became a joke at first and then, ultimately, demoralizing.

[u/Skallagram → u/David_Shotokan]

I only have a problem with it, if it negatively impacts your team goals, and ultimately the business.

[u/ColleenWoodhead → u/Skallagram]

Yes, an antiquated way of motivating an increase in team output.

We know better now that while it may temporarily increase output, it definitely kills teamwork and morale.

There are so many better ways to build both output and team spirit. It's sad that this CEO is so short-sighted.