Across organizations, a quiet shift is happening that is hard to define. It may feel like emails and meeting requests are piling up and responsibilities are expanding beyond established team norms, making it murkier where one role ends and another begins.

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 is showing up in how work is shared and absorbed within teams every day. When capacity shrinks, the work does not disappear. It redistributes.

Team members are increasingly stepping in to cover gaps, redefining informal roles, and stretching into new areas with little transition time. For leaders, this often means making rapid decisions about priorities, skill gaps, and workload sustainability while still being accountable for results, engagement, and retention. In this environment, teamwork is less about executing clearly defined roles and more about continuously recalibrating expectations, skills, and support in the face of ongoing uncertainty.

At the same time, there is a notable absence of promotions, career growth, or financial incentives across many sectors. Teams are being asked to carry more collective weight without a corresponding shift in recognition or resources. We call this dynamic The Great Pile-On.

As employees adapt to an always evolving corporate landscape, absorbing new responsibilities along the way, we wanted to understand how The Great Pile-On is affecting teams, many of which are quietly holding together critical workstreams without additional support or compensation.

We surveyed 2,503 people to learn how they are navigating this subtle shift and what organizations can do to strengthen teamwork during a time when the margin between responsibility and resources grows ever smaller.

The Missing Team Conversation

We found that 31% of respondents have recently taken on additional responsibilities at work, and more than half said those new responsibilities followed a restructuring or layoff. What is especially telling is the duration. For most, these expanded contributions are not short-term stretch assignments. Over 60% have been doing the extra work for six months or longer, signaling that this is not a temporary adjustment during transition but a new baseline for their teams.

When teams absorb more work, there is often an implicit assumption that the extra effort will be acknowledged in some meaningful way. But that expectation is frequently left unaddressed. Only about one in five employees were told that additional responsibilities could lead to advancement. Even fewer received a specific timeline or explicit commitment. For many, the message was vague or nonexistent. In some cases, employees were simply told this was now part of the job.

This ambiguity affects more than individual motivation. It shapes team dynamics. When expectations shift without open discussion, teams are left to navigate unspoken assumptions about who owns what, how long the stretch will last, and whether the added load is shared equitably. Silence creates a vacuum, and that vacuum can erode trust, leading to burnout, overwhelm, and even resentment about perceived workload inequities and lack of support.

Committed Teams Step Up, At First

Nearly 80% of respondents reported being with their organization for more than two years, and half for more than five. These are experienced team members with deep institutional knowledge and a strong sense of responsibility to their colleagues.

When asked to step up, most do.

In fact, many report a positive experience initially. Engagement often increases, collaboration intensifies, and productivity rises while morale remains relatively steady. 60% say team morale is high, even amid growing demands. On the surface, The Great Pile-On appears to strengthen teamwork. People rally. They cover for one another. They find creative ways to move the work forward.

But early momentum can mask emerging strain.

The Cost to Team Effectiveness

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

Responsibilities that once felt novel or temporary become permanent features of the team’s workload. Time management becomes more complex. Skill gaps become more visible. Informal role shifts create confusion about decision rights and accountability. As pressure mounts, stress and disengagement begin to threaten not just individual performance but collective effectiveness.

The data reveals this tension clearly. While relationships often remain intact, 42% agree their team experiences more conflict when workload increases. Even high trust teams are not immune to strain. When capacity is stretched, misunderstandings rise, patience shortens, and small disagreements can escalate more quickly.

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

This is not a sudden breakdown. It is a gradual erosion of clarity, energy, and shared accountability. Teams may still value one another and maintain positive relationships yet feel increasingly taxed by the day-to-day realities of sustaining performance without adequate support.

When employees begin to consider leaving, they rarely point to lack of promotion alone. Instead, they describe unsustainable workloads and insufficient support to do quality work. In a team context, this often shows up as frustration with unclear expectations, repeated fire drills, and a sense that collaboration has become reactive rather than intentional.

The issue is not ambition. It is exhaustion. And when exhaustion spreads within a team, performance and culture both suffer.

Team Leader Support Is the Difference

One variable consistently separates teams that navigate increased expectations successfully from those that struggle: leader support.

Even acknowledging the strain that The Great Pile-On places on a team can significantly improve morale. When leaders create space for honest conversations about capacity and tradeoffs, teams are better equipped to adapt together.

Respondents identified five elements of effective leader support. Disengagement decreased when leaders did more than one of the following:

1. 1. Check in regularly about workload and capacity.

2. 2. Ask how team members are doing, not just about task status.

3. 3. Advocate for the team’s needs with senior leadership.

4. 4. Clarify priorities and help decide what matters most.

5. 5. Support team members when they push back on additional 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 helps explain why some teams remain resilient even under pressure. It is not that they are asked to do less. It is that expectations and support are aligned. Open dialogue, shared priorities, and visible advocacy reinforce trust and reduce unnecessary friction.

The data makes one insight clear. Most teams are willing to take on more responsibility and can even maintain strong relationships while doing so. But sustained performance requires more than goodwill. When leaders actively protect capacity, clarify goals, and reinforce shared accountability, teams are not just surviving challenging periods. They are strengthening the trust and cohesion that make high performance possible over the long term.

Wiley assessment brands lay the groundwork for cohesive teams. Specifically, The Five Behaviors learning experience offers a powerful framework for building successful teams. By fostering healthy teams across an entire organization, you can drive internal growth and retain top talent.

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.