Overworked bosses tend to be significantly less fair than others

Overworked managers are pretty common — and let’s be honest, if a manager isn’t overworked, most of them are still going to tell you that they’re overworked, in large part because busy is the currency of the modern age.

The №1 logical problem of “the overworked manager” might be “Well, tasks are going to fall by the wayside because he/she is so overwhelmed.” Right, I’ve seen this happen maybe 728,144 times. That’s not even an exaggeration. Those are usually the 11pm emails. “Where is such-and-such deliverable?” You stare blankly at the screen of your phone. “Oh, the thing we haven’t discussed in six weeks? Oh, OK…”

But what if there’s a bigger issue around fairness of overworked managers?

Some new research on all this

This research is based on three independent studies conducted on overworked vs. lighter-workload managers, and let me serve up two important sections. First:

Using these three independent data sources, we found that bosses with heavier (vs. lighter) workloads prioritized core technical tasks over treating employees fairly, and as a result, were less likely to be reported as acting fairly by their employees.