In almost every team, there is an employee managers can confidently say about: “Give it to him, he’ll handle it.”
This is the person who knows the job well, does not create unnecessary problems, meets deadlines, and knows how to react when things do not go according to plan. Over time, they earn the trust of both management and colleagues, so naturally, they begin to receive greater responsibility.
At first glance, this is a positive sign — the company recognizes them as a reliable and capable member of the team. But this is also where a problem that is rarely discussed can begin.
Imagine an employee who has been with the company for several years and consistently performs their job successfully. At some point, an important project comes up with a tight deadline, and the manager decides to entrust it to this employee because they know it will get done.
The project is completed successfully, and a few months later, one of their colleagues leaves the company. Until a replacement is found, someone needs to take over the clients and some of the colleague’s responsibilities, so once again, the same employee is chosen.
The agreement is that this will only be temporary. However, several months pass, and those temporary tasks gradually become part of the employee’s everyday workload.
None of this is necessarily a problem in itself. On the contrary, capable employees should be given greater challenges and responsibilities, because this is exactly how future experts and managers develop within an organization.
The problem begins when the volume and complexity of the work increase, while the employee’s position, working conditions, and opportunities for advancement remain unchanged.
After a year, the employee may formally still hold the same position, but the reality of their working day is completely different. In addition to their own responsibilities, they coordinate projects, train new employees, resolve issues with important clients, and take on responsibilities that were never originally part of their role.
The company clearly trusts their abilities, but that trust has not been accompanied by formal recognition of the fact that their role has changed significantly.
At that point, the employee may begin to ask a completely reasonable question:
If I have already been working at a higher level for quite some time, when will the company recognize it?
This is one of the more common contradictions in human resource management.
An employee who struggles to complete their own tasks will rarely be given additional responsibility, while someone who consistently demonstrates that they are capable of more gradually receives more and more work.
An additional risk is that the most responsible employees are not always the most vocal ones. They may not constantly say that they have too much work, refuse every task that falls outside their job description, or immediately request a meeting with HR.
Instead, they continue fulfilling their responsibilities, and from the outside, everything may appear to be functioning perfectly.
But just because someone is not complaining does not mean they are not noticing what is happening.
Instead, they may simply start looking at what the job market has to offer. They may come across an opening for a position that matches the work they are already doing, attend an interview, and perhaps receive an offer where their actual level of responsibility is recognized through both the position and the employment conditions.
When they eventually resign, the reaction within the company is often one of genuine surprise:
“He never said he was unhappy.”
Perhaps they truly never said it directly. But the company had opportunities to notice that the person who was supposed to temporarily take on additional tasks had been doing them for an entire year; that the employee who was initially supposed to help with one project had become the first choice for every important project; and that someone who formally remained a team member had long been taking on responsibilities more closely associated with a higher-level position.
So, the next time an important task comes up and someone says during a meeting:
“Give it to him, he’ll always handle it,”
perhaps it is worth asking one more question:
How long have we been relying on the same person because we know they are capable of more — and does their current position truly reflect that?