Addressing workload imbalance without damaging coworker relationships
🧭 worksocial problemSingle report ●●●●●
A remote developer at a small IT company reports that they are consistently performing significantly more complex work than a long-tenured colleague who produces low-quality output, yet they fear that addressing this disparity during their upcoming salary review will damage their personal relationship with the colleague.
What people do today
- Assisting the colleague with tasks
- Ignoring the performance gap
- Preparing for annual performance reviews
🔧 Fix this
Ideas a builder, maker or community group could start on:
- A framework for performance-based salary negotiation that focuses on individual impact metrics rather than comparative peer performance.
- A peer-feedback template that allows employees to document team-wide bottlenecks objectively without naming specific individuals.
- A workshop or coaching service for employees on how to have 'difficult conversations' with managers about team productivity imbalances.
Real voices
“The difficult part is that he is genuinely a nice person. We get on well outside the day-to-day work, and I do not want to damage that relationship or make this personal. My concern is entirely about his contribution as a teammate.”
Related problems
🧭 workproduct6 reports
Inability to filter AI-generated content on LinkedIn
🧭 workproduct6 reportsIndeed job feed ignores user preferences
🧭 worksocial6 reportsDifficulty setting boundaries with talkative senior colleague
FixHumanityDaily
The most important new problems, and ideas to fix them, in your inbox.
Placeholder: no data is collected yet.