Ethics: My Intern Stole a Task–and Leaderboard Points–From an Employee. What Should I Do?

A Reddit member writes: 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 himself 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?

Minda Zetlin responds:

The full-time employee is perfectly right. His task was swiped. And, frankly, you don’t have much choice as to where the credit should go. If team members can assign tasks to themselves in pursuit of leaderboard points, that’s a recipe for chaos. Also, sooner or later, someone will assign themselves a task they’re not qualified to do.

There have to be consequences for stealing someone else’s task. Otherwise, as one comment noted, you might as well not bother assigning tasks at all. Everyone could just choose to do whatever they want.

So, the credit for the task and the leaderboard points must go to the employee you assigned it to, no matter who completed it. Since this is an intern, you might want the employee to double check the work anyhow. Going forward, ideally it shouldn’t be possible for people to assign tasks to themselves in this system. And there should be a formal rule against it.

The intern has a lot to learn.

Here’s a question: Do you think another full-timer would have done this, or do you think they would have known to ask first? We often think of internship as an opportunity for a recent graduate or other newcomer to learn a job or an industry. But it’s also a chance for them to learn how to operate in the workplace. If you’ve been doing it for a while it can be easy to forget how much you didn’t know when you first started.

If the intern has spent most of his time so far in school, he may need to learn the written and unwritten rules of work. I once knew an intern who presented his bosses with a list of more than 20 improvements their company should make. He was trying to be helpful, so he was quite surprised when it didn’t go over well.

Interns offer their services for free or at reduced pay in exchange for the education they get. It’s time for you to deliver some of that education. Sit down with the intern one on one and gently explain that he’s playing a dangerous game. Whatever the benefit is of having points on the leaderboard, it can’t be worth turning a co-worker into an enemy. Tell him that next time he wants an extra task to build up his score, he should ask you to assign him one.

Finally, many who commented on Reddit had negative things to say about the leaderboard itself and gamification at work in general. I’m not sure I agree. The leaderboard is new, and it certainly sounds like it needs some refinements. But it also seems to be doing its job. You’ve got two people fighting over what sounds like a tedious task. Maybe in time it can help you get unpopular work completed, and make it more fun for those who have to do it. If so, that’s a win for everyone.

Got an ethical dilemma of your own? Send it to Minda at minda@mindazetlin.com. She may address it in a future column.