The Great Pile-On: When Workloads Rise and Career Growth Stalls

Across organizations, a quiet shift is happening that’s hard to define. It may feel like emails and meeting requests are piling up and tasks are no longer fitting the job description.

As organizations responded to budget constraints, workforce reductions, and accelerating change in 2025, an important—but less visible—shift began to take hold. Rather than unfolding through large-scale restructurings or formal change initiatives, the impact emerges in how work gets redistributed and managed day to day. Leaders are increasingly responsible for absorbing lost capacity, redefining roles, and asking teams to stretch into new areas with limited transition time. For managers, this often means making rapid decisions about priorities, capability gaps, and workload sustainability—while still being accountable for performance, engagement, and retention. In this environment, leadership is less about directing stable teams and more about continuously recalibrating expectations, skills, and support in the face of ongoing uncertainty.

And while this role creep continues to…creep…there is also a notable absence of promotions, career growth, or financial incentives across many sectors. This expectation of increased responsibility and skill-stretching without a formal change in role, pay, or title to match is what we call The Great Pile-On.

While employees adapt to the always-evolving corporate landscape, absorbing new responsibilities along the way, we wondered how The Great Pile-On has impacted individuals, many of whom are holding up entire departments without official recognition or increased compensation.

We surveyed 2,503 people to learn how they are navigating this subtle shift and what organizational leadership can do to support their people in this often-overwhelming time where the margin between responsibility and resources grows ever smaller.

The Missing Conversation

We found that 31% of our respondents have recently taken on additional responsibilities at work and more than half of them reported these new responsibilities happened in the wake of a restructuring or layoff. What’s especially telling is the duration: for most, these expanded responsibilities aren’t short-term stretch assignments. Over 60% have been doing the extra work for six months or longer signaling that this isn’t just a temporary favor during a time of transition, it’s a new baseline.

When employees take on more, the implicit assumption is often that effort will be acknowledged, if not immediately, then eventually. But we found that isn’t the case.

Only about one in five employees were told that additional responsibilities could lead to advancement. Even fewer received a specific timeline or explicit promise. For many, the message was either vague (“we’ll revisit”) or nonexistent. In some cases, employees were simply told this was now part of the job.

This ambiguity matters. Not because employees expect immediate promotions, but because silence creates a vacuum. Without clarity, people are left to wonder whether they’re personally growing or just absorbing inflated organizational strain.

Loyal Employees Eager to Contribute – At First

We found that most of our respondents are tenured, with nearly 80% reporting that they have been with their organization for more than two years, and half for more than five.

These are committed employees with deep institutional knowledge and a strong sense of responsibility and loyalty. When asked to step up, many do.

In fact, most report a positive experience initially. Engagement often increases and productivity goes up while morale remains relatively high. On the surface, The Great Pile-On appears to be working.

But this early success can be misleading.

The Cost of The Great Pile-On

As weeks turn into months, the cracks begin to show.

While once eager employees begin to see that novel or “one-off” responsibilities are a more permanent part of their job, taxing their time management, and stretching their skills, stress or disengagement becomes more of a threat to productivity.

What was once a motivating opportunity to pitch in during a challenging time has now become a more permanent strain. This is the point at which many start to wonder about the return on their energetic investment, wondering when a title or financial change may provide something more personally meaningful for their increased time and effort.

We also found that over a quarter of employees receive no training for their expanded responsibilities. When uneven workloads and decreased bandwidth become the norm, team conflict rises. The real inflection point tends to occur after the three-month mark when disengagement more than doubles.

This isn’t a sudden collapse. It’s a slow erosion of morale and engagement.

Our research showed that when employees start to consider leaving, they rarely cite lack of promotion as the reason. Instead, they talk about unsustainable workloads and not having the support or resources to do the job well.

The issue isn’t ambition, it’s exhaustion. There comes a crisis point where things must change to remain sustainable.

Manager Support Crucial

There is one variable that consistently separates positive experiences managing increased expectations from negative ones and that is manager support.

Even the act of acknowledging the difficult position The Great Pile-On can impose on employees goes a long way in improving morale.

Our respondents identified the top five elements of good manager support, and our research showed that disengagement decreased when managers did more than one of the following:

1. Check in regularly about workload.
2. Ask about how they're doing (and not just work status).
3. Speak up for them with leadership.
4. Help them decide what's most important.
5. Back them up when they say no to extra requests.

The risk of disengagement is 75% lower when this kind of support is present, yet only one in three employees report receiving it.

This gap explains why smaller organizations often fare better. Not because they demand less, but because support is more visible and more immediate. Large organizations can’t change their size, but they can change how managers are equipped to support people during periods of role expansion.

Here’s the key insight the data makes impossible to ignore: Most people are willing to take on more responsibility, but only if the support matches the expectation. With extra manager support and attention to how The Great Pile-On is impacting employee wellbeing, leaders can foster a culture that navigates challenging times and becomes stronger as a result.

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Wiley Workplace Intelligence conducts in-depth research on key workplace issues by gathering insights from individual contributors, managers, and leaders. Wiley Workplace Intelligence then analyzes these findings to provide actionable solutions that are shared in our blog.