Are You Overburdening Your Most Engaged Employees?

Published May 27, 2026 · Updated May 27, 2026

Employees who are highly motivated, energized and most likely to produce high quality work with minimal support or intervention are also most likely to be overburdened with ad hoc tasks and requests that keep showing up every now and then. They’re almost always the first one to get called when there’s a crisis. They get pulled into unplanned meetings and discussions because they’re the default fallback to lean on in case something urgent comes up.

Having a few of these people in your team makes your life easy as a manager because you can always count on them to step up and get things done. But over relying on your best people is your worst mistake—by expecting them to do too much you push them away.

All the extra work they’re expected to do takes their focus away from their main priorities—when unannounced tasks keep showing up, there’s less time left to do work that inspires and motivates them. They have to put in more hours to meet their original goals as unplanned work takes away a lot of their time and energy. The high expectations along with the exhaustion from addressing last minute requests, urgent problems and other work priorities takes a toll on their well-being and may even lead to burnout.

Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.
― Jim Collins, Good to Great

Motivated employees may be your first choice when unexpected and unintentional work shows up, but the question you need to ask yourself before you act on your impulse is this: “At what cost are you willing to assign them this work?”

Overreliance on your high performers can lead to overwhelm making them quit, become frustrated or resent you for not managing the workload evenly. Instead of placing excessive demands on your most engaged employees, follow these practices to utilize their potential without weighing them down with too many responsibilities.

Consider existing workload

Whether it’s a small task or a large unit of work, every new task assigned to your most engaged employees must take their current workload into account.

What if you assign them something new today and it makes them fall behind on the deliverable that’s due tomorrow?

What if they end up spending more time on the ad hoc request than what was originally anticipated?

What if they don’t like this work which makes them unhappy, discouraged and annoyed?

Instead of the default tendency to lean on them for everything new that shows up, evaluate the cost of involving them vs the benefit of leaving them out. Think about:

What will get impacted if you assign them this work? Is it acceptable?
What makes them your only choice to get this done?
Who else in the team might be able to take this on or share their workload so that one person isn’t expected to pull the weight?
What’s the worst that can happen if you don’t involve them?
Who else might feel thankful to be given this opportunity?

Burnout happens when there’s an ongoing mismatch between the conditions an employee needs to support their well-being and their best work, and what their organization actually provides. Not being given the resources or time you need to manage your workload, for example, or working in an environment where you have insufficient control and autonomy, are known burnout triggers.
― Kandi Wiens

Stop taking your high performers time and energy for granted. Consider their workload to be more fair and unbiased.

Align opportunities with interests

Engaged employees don’t mind the extra work when it’s an opportunity that aligns with their interest. What keeps them inspired is to solve tough problems, identify unique solutions and do the work that helps them expand their knowledge and build new skills.

However, when you assign them every ad hoc unit of work assuming they will be the most efficient in getting things done, you ignore what keeps them inspired and motivated. You don’t take into account what matters to them. You ignore what kind of work will help them improve and what will simply keep them busy without improving their skills.

Aligning opportunities with interests may not be possible all the time, but consciously trying to do this can help you achieve a much better allocation of work—you can avoid giving them work they’ve mastered and done multiple times before. You can consider their aspirations and the gap in their skills to keep the work growth-oriented. You can even frame it that way to keep the conversation productive.

To avoid overburdening your most engaged employees, ask this:

What will this task/project help them improve?
Does this work align with their goals, aspirations and interests?
If it’s something only they can do, how can you frame it in a manner that establishes the importance of the task while clarifying why you’ve chosen them to take it on?
Have you connected with them to know how they actually feel about the work and whether they find it interesting or mundane?

Remember that performance follows a power law distribution in most jobs, no matter what your HR department tells you. Ninety percent or more of the value on your teams comes from the top 10 percent. As a result, your best people are worth far more than your average people. They might be worth 50 percent more than your average people or fifty times more, but they are absolutely worth more. Make sure they feel it. Even if you don’t have the financial resources to provide huge differences in pay, providing greater differences will mean something.
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules

Stop ignoring your high performers goals and aspirations. Taking it into account can keep them energized and inspired.

Plan and reprioritize

Engaged employees are most likely to have more things on their plate than they can handle. Being good at what they do does not automatically make them good at planning and prioritization. They may underestimate the time it will take to solve a problem. They may commit to doing more work than they can handle.

Without planning and prioritizing their work well, they may feel overloaded, overworked and overwhelmed. But instead of relooking at their priorities, they may try to meet their commitments by working extra hours. More work only adds to their burden, leaving them exhausted and burnt out.

To help your most engaged employees achieve more without feeling overloaded, do this:

Schedule planning meetings with the goal to identify what deserves their attention and what must be reorganized, replanned or decluttered.
Identify tasks which must be reallocated—someone else can do the work to help them focus on their most important goals.
Add in buffers to account for unknowns to keep commitments real and productive.
Eliminate tasks that are no longer useful or can be postponed to a later date.

We’re lousy at figuring out how much time something will take us to complete. It’s a combination of overestimating our abilities and, to add insult to injury, underestimating the degree to which we are overestimating. We think we can do more than we can.
— Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit

Stop assuming that your high performers can manage their own priorities well. Help them stay realistic by planning and reprioritizing their work.

Provide active support

Just because your engaged employees are self-motivated does not mean that you can assign them responsibility and leave them to figure everything out on their own. They may be dedicated and committed and may even navigate challenges on their own, but knowing that you’re around and will support them when they need help is crucial to act independently.

Your presence matters. Your time and attention boosts their confidence in their decisions, enables them to take risks and makes them feel valued and trusted. Your advice during difficult moments helps them consider different possibilities. Your ability to ask questions without providing solutions expands their thinking skills. Knowing that you won’t abdicate them when they need you the most empowers them to push boundaries and reach for their potential.

Your support is required at every step—connecting with them on a regular basis to understand how they’re doing and what they need to do better. Without actively engaging, you may not notice signs of overwork and exhaustion. You may miss the opportunity to keep their workload sane.

Provide support without micromanaging their work:

What challenges are they facing and how do they plan to solve them?
What prevents them from making progress?
What’s creating unnecessary friction, making it difficult to achieve goals?
What kind of help do they need?

Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time.
― Marcus Buckingham, First, Break All the Rules

Stop ignoring your most engaged employees. Just because they’re doing well does not mean they don’t need your support.

Take their feedback

Your most engaged employees may be the most dissatisfied even though it may not be visible to you. Their ability to produce good work may overshadow the deep frustration they feel from being taken for granted. But, sooner or later, these feelings of discontentment will start impacting their work—they may not show the same enthusiasm or drive they brought to work. They may become reluctant to take on additional responsibilities. They may stop putting in the effort which made them shine and succeed.

The change may be minor and hard to notice at first, which can leave their feelings unaddressed and unacknowledged. The only way to know how they’re actually feeling and what’s bothering them the most is to engage in a candid feedback discussion. By showing that you’re genuinely interested in their feedback, you can encourage them to open up and share their true feelings. By asking questions, you can dig deeper and try to understand their real concerns.

Getting this feedback is not always easy though. You need to approach the discussion with curiosity without defensiveness or justification. You need to make them feel comfortable without fear of reprisal. You need to show an intent to actually fix things. All talk and no action will eventually make them shut down.

To get honest feedback that’s actionable:

Make them feel safe by listening to their concerns without justifying or turning defensive.
Help them understand why their feedback matters and how you plan to act on it.
Make it a habit to have such conversations regularly so that you can fix things before it’s too late.

The essence of good listening is empathy, which can be achieved only by suspending our preoccupation with ourselves and entering into the experience of the other person.
― Michael P. Nichols, The Lost Art of Listening

Stop assuming that your high performers don’t have concerns. Listen to them before the workload becomes unsustainable.

Summary

Over-relying on your best people is your worst mistake. High performers are the first to get called in a crisis, pulled into unplanned work and expected to always deliver, but this pattern leads to burnout, frustration and eventual departure.
Every new task must account for what the person is already carrying. Before assigning work, ask: what gets impacted, who else could do this and what’s the real cost of involving them vs leaving them out?
Engaged employees stay motivated when work helps them grow. Avoid assigning tasks they’ve already mastered. Consider their aspirations, skill gaps, goals and frame assignments in a way that makes the purpose and the choice of them clear.
High performers often over-commit and underestimate time. Hold regular planning sessions to declutter priorities, reallocate tasks, build in buffers and eliminate work that’s no longer useful. Act before the pile becomes unsustainable.
Self-motivation doesn’t mean people don’t need you. Regular check-ins asking about challenges, blockers and friction signal that you won’t abandon them. Your presence builds confidence and enables bigger risks.
Your best performers may be quietly the most frustrated. Declining enthusiasm and effort are early warning signs. Create space for candid feedback with curiosity, no defensiveness and a genuine intent to act on what you hear.