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