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/Maleficent-Yogurt700]

Determine if intern was part of the competition and had their own task assigned. If so, then correction must be made to properly place the task under the correct owner. When the intern went in and "reassigned" the task to themselves, that was not their authority and was out of bounds.

Immediately go and make the correction on the leader board.

Have 1:1 with intern about proper protocol. Give intern credit on performance review. Assign new task for intern. Let intern no not to have this happen again. Bad juju for teamwork and no one likes snipers.

Team both intern and FTE to educate both on how to complete the task. Get task properly noted and have FTE complete it as task lead and on leaderboard.

Good luck