The Conflict Expert

“I don’t mind helping. I just don’t understand why it’s always me.”

I hear some version of that sentence constantly in my coaching work, usually from someone proud of being reliable who isn’t looking to do less. They’re looking for someone to tell them whether what they’re feeling has a name, or looking for validation that they’re doing too much.

Here’s the thesis I start with: going the extra mile is healthy when it’s a choice and it’s noticed and commended. It does, however, become exploitation when it turns into an expectation nobody acknowledges. The early warning sign is almost never the workload itself. It’s the resentment building quietly within the person who’s constantly picking up the slack.

This scary thing is that this isn’t a rare occurrence. UK employees worked 1.2 billion hours of unpaid overtime in 2025, an average of 6.8 hours a week, worth around £8,100 a year to each person doing it (TUC analysis, via People Management, 2 March 2026). If you’ve been wondering whether you’re imagining it, you’re not, it’s all in the numbers.

What Going Above and Beyond at Work Actually Looks Like When It’s Healthy

Before I challenge anything, I want to validate it: wanting to help is not the problem. Researchers call this extra effort “organisational citizenship behaviour”, and in its healthy form it really does benefit teams, careers, and work cultures. Healthy extra efforts have three features: it’s voluntary, it’s reciprocated through recognition, growth, trust or reward, and it’s occasional rather than permanent. This isn’t an argument for doing less. It’s an argument for making the provision of extra help remain a choice rather than changing into an expectation.

Going the Extra Mile vs Being Taken Advantage of: Where the Line Is

Understanding the line between choice and expectation needs to be clear from the get-go. I give clients a simple three-question test. Could I say no without consequences? Does doing extra benefit me through recognition, growth, trust, or additional pay? Is this temporary, or has it quietly become my job without me realising it?

Underneath those questions is what psychologists call the psychological contract, which is essentially the unwritten expectations of going above and beyond for work. Exploitation is rarely an isolated dramatic event and actually manifests itself as a slow breach of that unwritten deal, which is exactly why it’s hard to identify. Researchers also use the term “compulsory citizenship behaviour”: extra effort that’s officially voluntary but actually pressured, measured with items like “there is pressure in the organisation that forces me to work overtime without any rewards.” In a two-wave study of 655 employees, that pressure correlated strongly with emotional exhaustion and workplace deviance (Liang, Yeh & Wang, Frontiers in Psychology, 2022). The concept traces back to research on the “dark side of the good soldier syndrome” (Vigoda-Gadot, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2006).

Ten Signs You’re Being Taken Advantage of at Work

A few of these alone are normal working life. Several together, especially over months, are worth taking more carefully.

1. Your “temporary” extra responsibilities are now six months old. Over 60% of workers carrying extra responsibilities have done so for six months or more, usually since a restructure or layoff (Wiley Workplace Intelligence, via HR Reporter, 25 February 2026).

2. You were promised it would “lead somewhere”, and it hasn’t. Only around one in five are ever told it could lead to advancement.

3. Your reward for being good at your job is more work. Duke research found people seen as having high self-control get handed more tasks, and everyone underestimates how long those tasks take (Duke Fuqua). Why do I get more work because I’m good at my job? Competence reads as capacity, and capacity gets filled unless someone stops it.

4. Your title changed, but your pay didn’t. More below.

5. Your passion is used as the reason you’ll do it. Across eight studies and 2,400+ participants, people judged it more legitimate to ask passionate employees to do extra, unpaid, even demeaning work (Duke Fuqua).

6. Someone else presents your work. 65% of US workers call a colleague taking credit their single biggest workplace “ick” (FlexJobs, n=2,142). Taking credit for a team’s work is a defining feature of exploitative leadership (Stress and Health, November 2025, n=263).

7. You feel guilty saying no, and you’re not alone. 53% feel guilty saying no to a manager, 42% worry a boundary will change how people see them (Resume Genius, September 2025).

8. You’re the default for the jobs nobody wants. More below.

9. Your evenings belong to your inbox. 29% of active workers are back in their inbox by 10pm, and meetings after 8pm are up 16% year on year (Microsoft Work Trend Index).

10. You’ve started to feel resentful. The clearest signal of all. Resentment means the psychological contract has been breached, and it’s the emotion most likely to turn into open conflict if nobody talks about it. More below.

Not every stretch of extra effort is exploitation. It probably isn’t if the work is time-limited and agreed, there’s a real development benefit, you could decline without fallout, or the whole team is stretched equally during a genuine crunch.

Doing More Work for the Same Pay: Why It’s Happening More in 2026

Three things explain why this is more prevalent in 2026: layoffs and flatter structures redistributing departing employees’ workload onto the colleagues who remain, a weaker job market making it harder for those employees to push back, and AI quietly absorbing a laid-off colleague’s old tasks without any of it being formally reassigned to you. None of this is a personal failing. It’s structural, and naming it that way takes the shame out of carrying it.

80.8% of US employees who took on extra responsibilities after layoffs got no pay increase, and 75% saw their workload rise, a pattern holding across every generation (Careerminds survey of 900 professionals, early 2026). Disengagement more than doubled after three months of carrying extra work, though manager support cut that risk by 75%. Only one in three employees actually got it (Wiley Workplace Intelligence, via HR Reporter, February 2026).

Should I take on a colleague’s work after redundancies? Worth knowing: 60.7% of US workers have used AI to take on a colleague’s old tasks, rising to 74.3% where layoffs happened, and most didn’t tell their manager how much was AI-assisted (ResumeBuilder, via Allwork.space, April 2026). Fear keeps people quiet: only 25% of UK workers strongly feel their job is safe from elimination (ADP People at Work 2026), and global workforce motivation dropped nine points in a year, with over half of managers saying they’re exhausted too (Korn Ferry Workforce 2026).

Unpaid Overtime in the UK: What It’s Really Costing You

It’s worth making the hidden cost concrete, then being clear about what UK law does and doesn’t protect.

In 2025, 3.5 million UK workers, 12% of the workforce, regularly worked unpaid overtime: 1.2 billion hours between them, averaging 6.8 hours a week, worth around £8,100 in missed pay per person. The total was £28.5bn, down from £31bn in 2024 (TUC analysis, via People Management, 2 March 2026), not to be confused with Acas’s separate £28.5bn figure for the cost of workplace conflict, same number, two unrelated things. 59% of UK employees would like to work fewer hours, and 30% say their workload is too high (CIPD Good Work Index 2026).

Is unpaid overtime legal in the UK? Not in itself. The law sets two limits: a 48-hour average working week, usually measured over 17 weeks, unless you’ve opted out in writing, and your average pay across all hours worked must never fall below the National Minimum Wage, even though employers don’t have to pay extra for the overtime itself (Acas). That minimum wage point is the one most people don’t know, and it’s worth checking if you’re on a lower salary.

There’s also no explicit right to disconnect in UK law, and the Employment Rights Act 2025 didn’t introduce one. A statutory Code of Practice has been promised, but consultation on a draft was still awaited as of late September 2026 (Lewis Silkin, 25 September 2026).

Dry Promotions and Non-Promotable Tasks: The Quieter Ways Goodwill Gets Used

Two quieter, trending forms of this are worth naming, because both can feel like recognition, which is exactly why they’re hard to challenge.

A dry promotion, a title upgrade and more responsibility without a matching pay rise, often with only a vague promise of a future review, tends to follow layoffs. People who experience it as inadequate recognition often keep doing their core job well while quietly holding back the extra (SHRM, 5 December 2025). In the US, the share of employers offering a new title instead of a pay rise rose to 13% in 2024, labelled here as 2024 US data specifically, since no verified UK figure exists (WSJ data, via CBS News, 20 March 2024).

What is a dry promotion? A bigger title and more to do, without the pay to match.

The quieter cousin is “office housework”: necessary jobs that don’t count at review time. Research by Linda Babcock, Maria Recalde and Lise Vesterlund on these non-promotable tasks is the standard source here (Harvard Business Review; The No Club, Simon & Schuster, 2022). A 2026 working paper adds a gentler nuance: women are more likely to volunteer for, be asked for, and agree to these tasks, largely because people genuinely believe they’re less competent in areas that don’t match their own gender stereotype, not through any calculated avoidance (Psychology Today, on a Kingsuwankul, Rott & Oostrom working paper, 22 September 2026).

Citizenship Fatigue: How Always Going the Extra Mile Leads to Burnout and Resentment

This is the pattern I see most often as a conflict specialist, and the bridge from an individual feeling to a team-wide problem. What is citizenship fatigue? Researchers led by Mark Bolino coined the term for when going above and beyond stops feeling energising and starts feeling depleting. In a study following 273 employees and peers over seven months, going above and beyond was far more linked to fatigue when people felt unsupported, and that fatigue then predicted less helping later (Bolino et al., Journal of Applied Psychology, January 2015). The extra mile, unsupported, uses itself up.

A 2026 meta-analysis of 467 studies found a broken psychological contract strongly linked to lower engagement, higher burnout and emotional exhaustion, with a much smaller effect on actual work quality (Rees, Brownell & Kickul, Journal of Business and Psychology, 27 May 2026). In plain terms: people keep doing the job, they just stop giving the extra. A 2026 review of 59 studies found almost all of them linked contract breach with higher occupational stress (Mahalekamge, Gardiner & Ali, Journal of Management & Organization, March 2026).

If you’ve worked with someone who used to be brilliant and is now “difficult”, consider that they weren’t difficult. They were depleted. 64% of US professionals say they deliberately slow down to avoid finishing early, because finishing fast has historically brought more work, not reward (Software Finder, via Forbes, 23 July 2026). [If unaddressed pressure like this is spilling into team friction, the burnout and team conflict article goes deeper, link to come.]

How to Say No to Extra Work Without Damaging the Relationship

This is where most of my coaching conversations end up, because knowing there’s a problem and knowing how to raise it without a confrontation are different skills.

Separate the facts from the feeling first: write down what you’ve taken on, since when, and what was promised. Reframe “no” as a trade-off: “Happy to pick this up. Which of X or Y should move to make room?” Ask for a real time limit, not a vague “we’ll see”. Raise recognition directly, not resentfully: “I’ve been covering this for six months. I’d like to talk about how that’s reflected in my role.” And keep a simple record as responsibilities arrive, because it’s easy to lose track of how much has accumulated.

How do I say no to extra work without looking lazy? Make the trade-off visible: “I can take this on if something else comes off my plate, what should I deprioritise?” The numbers are on your side more than it feels: 80% of US workers would take on extra tasks if asked, but only 58% without compensation, and Gen Z are most willing to refuse uncompensated work outright, at 70% against 50% of boomers (Resume Genius, September 2025). Worth naming without stereotyping: 58% of people regularly put others’ needs first at a cost to themselves, and men report this slightly more than women, 61% against 56% (same source). Employees who actively manage their relationship with their manager, rather than just absorbing whatever comes, are better protected against the wellbeing cost of this dynamic (Stress and Health, November 2025).

For Leaders: How to Recognise and Reward High Performers Before You Lose Them

If you’re reading this as a manager or founder, this part is for you.

Treat it as a short self-audit. Who on your team never says no, and when did you last actually check what they’re carrying? Share out non-promotable tasks on a rota rather than asking for volunteers. Put real time limits on anything “temporary”. Match a title change with pay or a written review date. Give credit by name, every time it’s due. Manager support alone cut disengagement risk by 75% among employees carrying extra responsibilities, yet only one in three received it, and roughly a quarter to a third got no training for the extra responsibility either (HR Reporter, February 2026). Assigning non-promotable tasks deliberately, rather than waiting for volunteers, is the fairer approach (Babcock, Recalde & Vesterlund, Harvard Business Review, 2018).

When Conflict Coaching Can Help

A quiet word on when outside support is worth it, because not every version of this needs one.

It’s probably time if you’ve raised it and nothing’s changed, if resentment is affecting how you speak to colleagues, if you’re the one making requests of your team and want an honest outside view, or if you’re preparing for a high-stakes conversation about role or pay. Conflict coaching is built for exactly this.