You probably hear this a lot. You assign a task to an employee and they look at you with this sense of disgust and being wronged.
Because, they are experienced professional who were well respected in their previous life, and the task is ‘more suitable for someone at the level of an intern’.
This is definitely not good for the morale – the person might complain to their colleagues, and even customers.
Who is right, who is wrong – and how to tackle the situation?
Well, depends. If you asking for such tasks is an occasional occurrence, and the person is usually happily doing their ‘high value adding’ stuff, it is an alarm bell for you.
An employee who is too proud to get their hands dirty when necessary is never a good employee.
It is as bad as having someone who is nice and ineffective.
However, if it is a common occurrence and such tasks takes a majority of the person’s time, it becomes a totally different alarm bell.
Ultimately, as a manager, a boss, an entrepreneur, why would you hire someone who is over-qualified?
There are only two jobs you should use over-qualified and higher-than-you-would-other-wise-have-paid people – co-founders and the CFO.
Otherwise your team structure is full of wastage – and we see that A LOT with many of the series C funded startups in Southeast Asia.