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Reducing unnecessary work may not immediately feel like relief. A Bielefeld University study, summarized by Newswise on October 7, 2026, found that both increases and decreases in employees’ illegitimate tasks were associated with greater emotional exhaustion than a stable level. The finding is an association—not evidence that cutting tasks causes exhaustion. Researchers suggest that changes can create uncertainty about what employees will be expected to do next.
What the study found about changing tasks
The Newswise report describes two studies in which employees were surveyed repeatedly: once a day in one study and once a week in the other. The researchers examined how changes in work related to employees’ experiences over time. According to the report, both increases and decreases in illegitimate tasks were associated with more emotional exhaustion than a stable level of those tasks.
This finding concerns changes in a particular category of work, not every reduction in workload or every ordinary job duty. The report does not establish that reducing unnecessary tasks causes exhaustion, nor does it show that every employee responds the same way.
What counts as an illegitimate task?
Illegitimate tasks are tasks employees perceive as either unnecessary or unreasonable. The distinction depends on purpose and role, rather than on whether a task is difficult or unpleasant.
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Unnecessary tasks
These are work activities perceived to serve no meaningful purpose. For example, entering the same information into two separate lists when the lists could be combined may feel unnecessary.
Unreasonable tasks
These are tasks perceived as outside the expectations of a particular person’s job. The same task could be appropriate for one employee and unreasonable for another, depending on their role. The terminology and examples are discussed in a 2020 paper available through PubMed Central.
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Why a reduction might not bring immediate relief
When tasks change, employees may be unsure why the work was removed, whether their responsibilities will shift again, or what will be expected of them in the future. The Newswise report identifies this perceived uncertainty as a possible explanation for the link between changing tasks and exhaustion. It does not establish uncertainty as the only explanation or show that every task reduction creates it.
That distinction matters: the result is not a reason to preserve pointless work. It suggests that the way a change is experienced may depend partly on whether employees understand what is changing and what remains expected of them.
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How managers can communicate a task change
Professor Kai C. Bormann, a co-author, recommends explaining changes clearly and giving employees an opportunity to ask questions. In the Newswise report, he says: “Fewer burdensome tasks are generally good news. However, our study shows that even a reduction in such tasks can raise questions – for example, about what will be expected of me in the future. That is why managers should not only make changes to employees’ tasks, but also explain them.”
Applied to a real change, that recommendation means making the new arrangement understandable: explain what is being removed or reassigned, clarify who owns any remaining work, and leave room for employees to ask how their responsibilities will be affected. These are practical implications of the co-author’s advice, not interventions shown in the report to prevent exhaustion.
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What the report does not establish
The report identifies the journal as Work & Stress and gives the article pagination as 1–23, but it does not provide sample sizes, effect estimates, or full methods. Those omissions mean the scale of the associations and how broadly they apply cannot be assessed from the report alone. The findings are useful as a reason to pay attention to how changing work is communicated, not as proof that reducing unnecessary work is harmful.
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