Why Your Most Reliable Employee Becomes Everyone’s Backup Plan
Samka Keranovic is a certified life, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and neuroscience coach and co-founder of Desert Roots Wellness. Her work has appeared in Fast Company. With 16 years of private coaching experience, she specializes in helping high achievers overcome burnout, people-pleasing, and indecision.
Someone misses a deadline. A colleague calls out. A project needs rescuing before the client notices. The manager turns to the person who can usually make it work. At first, that choice makes sense. Experience matters. So does trust. When something needs attention quickly, you want someone capable of handling it.
But ask what happens afterward. Does that employee’s original workload change? Does someone address why the work needed rescuing? Does the responsibility return to its owner once the immediate problem is resolved? If the answer keeps being no, temporary help is becoming a permanent assignment. The employee who earned a reputation for reliability is now the department’s unofficial backup plan.
My perspective combines more than 20 years of corporate leadership with 16 years of private coaching. The question I want leaders and professionals to examine is simple: when does recognizing someone’s capability become relying on them to absorb work that belongs elsewhere?
When does helping become an expectation?
Consider a hypothetical team preparing a weekly client report. One employee struggles to finish their section, so a more experienced colleague steps in. The report goes out on time. The immediate problem is solved. The following week, the same colleague checks the unfinished section without being asked. Soon, checking becomes correcting. Correcting becomes completing. Eventually, the manager treats the arrangement as the process.
Nothing was formally reassigned. Yet one person now carries both their own responsibilities and the obligation to make sure someone else’s work gets done. Helping a colleague is part of working on a team. The problem is repeated help without a clear agreement about ownership, capacity, or when the extra responsibility ends. When that agreement is missing, the person who steps in can become accountable for a result they were never given the authority or time to manage.
Why does the reliable person keep saying yes?
It is tempting to assume they enjoy the extra responsibility. Sometimes they do. They may want experience, welcome a challenge, or see a genuine opportunity to grow. Leaders should ask rather than interpret every yes as either enthusiasm or people-pleasing.
But other concerns can sit behind agreement. An employee may worry that declining will make them seem uncooperative. They may feel responsible for protecting a colleague, the customer, or the team’s reputation. Being the person who always finds a way may also have become an important part of how they see their value.
There is a practical calculation, too. Explaining the problem or training someone else can take longer today than doing the task yourself. The difficulty is that today’s shortcut can become next month’s standing obligation.
For the employee, the useful question is: am I choosing this responsibility, or accepting it because I do not feel able to disappoint someone? For the manager, it is: have I made it possible for this person to discuss capacity without having their commitment questioned?
What does praise leave unresolved?
“I don’t know what we would do without you” can be sincere appreciation. It can also describe a dependency that deserves attention. Thanking someone does not create more time in their schedule. A public compliment does not determine which deadline moves. Recognition matters, but it needs to accompany a realistic decision about the work.
An employee can feel valued and still be carrying too much. They can be proud of their contribution and resent being the automatic choice whenever something goes wrong. Those feelings do not cancel each other out.
Managers also need to distinguish a development opportunity from recurring cleanup. A stretch assignment should have a purpose, appropriate support, and clarity about what the employee will gain. Repeatedly taking over unfinished tasks may simply crowd out the work that would help them advance. Before calling an assignment an opportunity, ask whether the employee has the time, authority, and support to benefit from it.
What is the team learning from the arrangement?
If unfinished work always moves to the strongest performer, the team can lose sight of who owns the original responsibility. A manager may see completed tasks while missing the extra effort required to finish them.
That makes recurring problems harder to diagnose. Is the original employee missing a skill? Are instructions unclear? Is the deadline unrealistic? Is there too much work for the available staff? Or is someone repeatedly failing to meet an expectation they understand and have the resources to fulfill?
Those situations require different responses. Quietly transferring the task to a dependable colleague can postpone addressing all of them.
It also creates a coverage problem. If one person holds the knowledge and routinely handles the exceptions, what happens when that person takes leave? A team should be able to explain how essential work will continue without depending on someone checking messages during their time off.
What should leaders change first?
Start by making the extra work visible. Review a recent period with the employee: what did they take on outside their regular responsibilities, how long did it take, and what was delayed or compressed to accommodate it? Include troubleshooting, checking, and coordination. Work does not become effortless because someone handles it competently.
Then distinguish an occasional emergency from a recurring operating need. An absence may require temporary coverage. The same unresolved task returning every week calls for a decision about staffing, training, process, or accountability.
When assigning additional work, name the tradeoff. “Please take this over” is incomplete if every existing deadline remains unchanged. A more useful conversation identifies what will move, who approves that change, and how affected colleagues will be informed.
Give temporary help an endpoint. Clarify what support is needed, who remains responsible for the outcome, and when ownership returns. If a transfer is permanent, update the role, workload, authority, and compensation as appropriate. Do not leave a lasting change disguised as a favor.
Finally, build coverage before the next emergency. Give colleagues time to document essential tasks and practice them. Training and handoffs require capacity too, adding them on top of an already full schedule repeats the original problem.
What can employees say without abandoning the team?
A useful boundary makes the work and the decision clear. It does not require a long explanation of why you deserve a manageable workload.
If you can help but need a priority decision, try: “I can complete this today, but that will move my current deadline to Thursday. Which should take priority?”
If temporary help has become routine: “I’ve handled this for the past three weeks. Can we clarify whether ownership is changing and what would come off my existing workload?”
If a colleague needs support rather than a takeover: “I can help you work through this section. You’ll still need to complete and submit the final version.”
These are examples to adapt to your role and workplace. A direct manager may need to resolve the tradeoff, especially when you lack authority to change priorities yourself. Making a reasonable request does not guarantee a reasonable response, but it gives the conversation a specific issue to address.
You can care about the outcome while asking who owns it. You can be helpful without silently agreeing to become the permanent solution.
How do you know the pattern is changing?
Look beyond whether the work still gets done. Is ownership clearer? Are the same problems returning less often? Can the reliable employee take planned leave without remaining the default contact? When a new priority arrives, does something else actually move?
Ask the employee what has changed in practice. A revised job description or an encouraging conversation means little if the same unplanned work continues landing on their desk.
Reliability should give a person the opportunity to contribute well and grow. It should not make their capacity seem unlimited. Leaders have a responsibility to ensure that good performance does not quietly become an obligation to compensate for every gap around it.
The next time you reach for the person who always makes it work, pause long enough to ask: Are you recognizing their reliability, or making them responsible for everyone else’s?
Read more from Samka Keranovic
Samka Keranovic, Certified Holistic Life Coach, NLP Practitioner, and Neuroscience Coach
Samka Keranovic is a certified holistic life coach, NLP practitioner, and neuroscience coach who spent two decades in corporate leadership before building the coaching practice she once needed herself. As co-founder of Desert Roots Wellness, she works with high achievers and business owners who are successful on paper but quietly exhausted, helping them break free from people-pleasing, burnout, and indecision. Her work is grounded in 16 years of private coaching experience and the belief that real transformation comes from lived experience, not theory. Samka has been featured in Fast Company, Authority Magazine, and CHRO Daily, and works with clients internationally from Scottsdale, Arizona.
