An employee builds a volunteer program on top of her regular job, and it takes off, with glowing press mentions for the company. It has also turned her job into 60-hour weeks with no added pay or formal recognition, and she has started missing deadlines. Her manager will not shut it down, because leadership loves the visibility. Sue Ross, Chief Administrative Officer at maurices, heard that case from host Rebecca Taylor on HR Voices and played it back before answering.
The show describes a situation that “looks like generosity but functions like unmanaged burnout.” Nobody had necessarily done anything wrong, Sue said, but the company had built an arrangement that could not last. Across the episode, she argued that missed deadlines from a strong performer usually signal a capacity problem the company made, not a failure of time management.
Why the Volunteer Label Stops Fitting
Sue first asked what volunteer means here. An employee who starts a program on her own is volunteering. Once the company promotes it, collects publicity from it, and expects her to keep it running, the work may have become part of her job description.
Federal wage rules draw a similar line for nonexempt staff. The Department of Labor treats charitable work done at the employer’s request, or under its direction or control, as working time. The definition of hours worked deserves a look before anyone calls the extra time a gift.
Sue’s biggest concern was capacity. Telling the employee that the company loves the program and still needs everything she did before is not prioritization. It is “asking the employee to make a tradeoff” while every expectation stays in place.
Her own company, maurices, supplies the parallel. In about 850 markets, many of them small, store leaders join the chamber of commerce or start a sock drive, and she counts that as part of the business model. The company does not take work off the day job to make room for it, she acknowledged.
Why Missed Deadlines Point to Capacity
When deadlines slip, the usual response tells the employee to manage her time better. The World Health Organization frames burnout differently: it classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. High performers tend to blame themselves. They see “a me problem,” Sue said, when it is “probably an organizational problem.”
Rebecca added an idea a friend often posts about, the resilience myth. Praising an overloaded employee as resilient rewards one person’s tolerance for hard conditions instead of fixing the conditions. The alternative is treating workload as a design problem rather than a stamina test.
Sue tied the myth to a cultural risk. When coworkers watch a star working 60 or 70 hours collect internal applause, they assume those hours are now expected of them. That is where she sees companies start to lose people. Gallup research on burnout found that burned-out employees are 2.6 times as likely to be actively seeking a different job, which makes one overloaded volunteer a question for the company’s retention plan.
What Actually Works
Start With the Person Closest to the Work
Sue would start with the employee, then the manager, and bring in senior leadership later. Her questions for the employee cover how the program started, how much time it takes, whether it belongs in the job, and what the employee believes would happen if she said she could not keep working 60 hours.
Sue would ask the manager what could come off the employee’s plate and how organic the program was, then reassure the manager that the overload is not a verdict on their leadership. Leadership waits, because executives may want the program untouched. The conversation also ruled out putting her on a PIP as a weapon to force the choice the company wants.
Train Managers to Read Over-Capacity
Sue wants people leader training to cover over-capacity, because most people want to do a good job and keep saying yes. Her signals are concrete. A good performer starts missing deadlines, someone on PTO is still in meetings, or a person says “fine” every time and looks flat.
She also widened what psychological safety covers beyond saying no in a meeting. It should include room to admit that a person cannot take on more. Early in her career, she planned to sleep less to absorb a big project on top of a big job. Her manager told her, “This is not a you problem,” then peeled the work back and gave her a resource. Sue called it “a terrific example of psychological safety as it pertains to capacity.”
Make Leadership Resource What It Celebrates
If the company values the brand awareness the program brings, Sue argued, it has a responsibility to shift or add resources. A manager may lack budget for headcount, but the company can find resources elsewhere, and brokering that is “a great facilitation role for HR.” If the resources are not there, the program ramps down or the job is reprioritized. Either way, the employee should hear that the overload was never a personal failing.
Some employees will pick the passion project anyway. “We all live in choice,” Sue said. At maurices, people get volunteer time, and one associate active in community work decided she would rather do that work than buy product. The company let her follow that passion, and she still sends maurices candidates.
Where Employee Relations Fits
Overload like this seldom reaches HR as a formal complaint. It surfaces as slipping deadlines and quiet worry from coworkers. Sue sees HR’s value in viewing the case from the employee’s, the manager’s, and leadership’s side, then bridging all three. AI cannot do that part, she argued, because it takes context and “relational dialogue that needs to happen to solve the issue.” It can carry the paperwork, including case summaries that can take hours to write. Case management that automates manual work returns that time to the conversations.
Frequently Asked Questions About Volunteer Work and Burnout
Usually once the company promotes it, benefits from it, and expects it to continue. Sue Ross asks whether the employee started it herself or the company promoted it.
Capacity is the more likely cause. Sue argues that companies add projects without removing anything from the original job, then tell the employee to manage her time better.
The employee, then the manager. Sue starts closest to the work and brings in senior leadership later, because executives who enjoy the visibility may see the program as part of the business model.
The belief that calling an overloaded employee resilient is a compliment. Host Rebecca Taylor described it as rewarding tolerance for difficult conditions instead of building an organization where people need less resilience.
Not necessarily. Sue would ask leadership whether the program is worth resourcing. If it is not, it can be ramped down or the job reprioritized, and some employees will choose the passion project.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Sue’s framing turns a burnout story into a resourcing decision. The company enjoys the visibility, so it owns the capacity problem behind it.
Starting with correction, Sue Ross said, is “a kiss of death for HR people.” Her mantra with her team is to start with curiosity about how the situation happened and what each stakeholder group thinks. Here, that curiosity starts from a positive story, a great employee “using a lot of discretionary effort” to make the company better.
See how AllVoices helps People teams catch overload early and document how they resolved it.
