Two new surveys landed on the same day this week, and they describe the same problem from opposite ends. Inside organizations, jobs are quietly getting bigger. Outside them, people are piling on more work just to make the math work. If you lead people, employee workload is no longer a scheduling issue. It is a signal that the design of work is under strain.

One survey says most professionals are now doing the work of more than one role. The other says most younger workers are holding work beyond their primary job. Everyone, it seems, is working two jobs now.

That is not a motivation problem. It is a design problem.

Key takeaways

  • A Korn Ferry survey of more than 16,000 professionals found 61% are performing the responsibilities of more than one role, and 45% say they are too busy to deliver meaningful results.
  • A Goldman Sachs survey found 80% of Gen Z and 77% of Millennials are doing additional work outside their primary roles, and most say they could not make ends meet without it.
  • Jobs are being re-bundled inside organizations while workers unbundle their lives across several sources of income. Both trends put pressure on the value exchange.
  • The leadership response is to redesign roles and define what the work is for, not to ask for more endurance.

What’s happening

On October 1, Fortune reported on Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2026 survey in a piece titled the rise of the “two-job job”. The headline number: 61% of respondents said they were performing the responsibilities of more than one role. Sixty-two percent said their workloads had increased significantly over the past two years. Nearly half, 45%, said they were too busy to deliver meaningful results that contribute to growth.

The survey also points to why. Korn Ferry found that 42% of organizations had cut management roles over the past year, and 55% of the managers still in place said they were exhausted. AI is part of the picture, but not in the way most announcements suggest. According to the report, 79% of CEOs said AI had improved efficiencies, compared with 51% of individual contributors, and among workers Korn Ferry describes as “AI-weary,” 52% said using the technology had increased their workloads. Employee motivation fell from 71% in 2024 to 61% in 2026. Korn Ferry Consulting CEO Lesley Uren put it plainly: “Growth doesn’t come from just asking people to do more.” Wharton’s Peter Cappelli added that managers “solve problems that help their teams get work done.”

The same day, Fortune covered a Goldman Sachs retirement survey on younger workers and second jobs. While 61% of employees said they are engaging with additional work outside of their primary roles, the figure was 80% for Gen Z and 77% for Millennials. For most of them this is not a choice made for fun: 76% of Gen Z and 73% of Millennials said they couldn’t make ends meet without the added income. And 69% of Gen Z respondents, along with 67% of Millennials, said they find it difficult to focus at work because they worry about debt or household costs. More than one in three (34%) said a primary motivation for moving jobs would be to earn more money.

Put the two together and you get a picture most leaders will recognize. The role is expanding. The paycheck is not stretching. And the person in the middle is carrying both.

Why employee workload is a design question

In The Next Turn, I describe two changes happening at once. The first is a change in the definition of work: what people believe work is for, what it should provide and what it is worth. The second is a change in the structure of work: how work actually flows, now that AI and new ways of working are reshaping tasks. This week’s news sits right where those two collide.

Start with structure. In Chapter 10, “Fractional Work and the Unbundling of Jobs,” I argue that the full-time job is a construct. It bundled many kinds of tasks into one role largely because communication and coordination used to be slow. Today, organizations are bundling more tightly, not less. Manager roles are cut, the work does not disappear, and it gets folded into whoever remains. That is the “two-job job.”

Meanwhile, workers are doing the opposite. They are unbundling their working lives across a primary job and additional work. Leaders sometimes read that as divided loyalty. The Goldman Sachs data suggests something more basic. For most younger respondents, the extra work is about making ends meet.

Fractional work does not cause that behavior. It reveals it.

The Next Turn, Chapter 10

What it reveals is an exchange under pressure. In Chapter 5, “The Value Exchange (The 3-Year Problem),” I make the case that retention is a design problem, not a motivation problem, and that leaders should stop confusing endurance with commitment. When a role keeps absorbing responsibilities while the return stays flat, people do not need a lecture on resilience. They need the exchange to make sense again. And this is not a generational complaint. Korn Ferry’s numbers cover professionals broadly, and its sharpest exhaustion figure is about managers.

Now the AI piece. In Chapter 12, “Defining Work Again,” one of the seven moves is to redesign expectations once the workflow changes. That means asking what should change around a faster workflow, and where the saved time goes. The gap between 79% of CEOs and 51% of individual contributors who report AI efficiencies tells me that question is often not being asked. When it goes unanswered, saved time quietly becomes more work. The efficiency shows up in the plan. The workload shows up in the people.

Ambiguity is not neutral.

The Next Turn, Chapter 12

This is also a standards-and-signals moment. When everyone is stretched across too many responsibilities, it gets tempting to reward the most visible signs of effort: the fastest reply, the longest day, the person who never says no. Those are signals. The standards an organization actually needs are quality, reliability, sound judgment and follow-through. Korn Ferry’s finding that 45% are too busy to deliver meaningful results is a warning that the signals are crowding out the standards.

Your next turn

Here are five moves for leaders and managers this week:

  • Audit one role for bundling. Pick a role that has absorbed work from a cut or unfilled position. List what is now bundled into it. Ask which pieces still belong together and which could be redesigned, shared or dropped.
  • Ask where the AI time went. For one workflow where AI was introduced, ask your team directly: did this save time, add time, or move time somewhere else? Then decide on purpose what the saved time is for.
  • Name the exchange out loud. If a role has grown, say so. Be clear about what the organization is offering in return, whether that is pay, growth, flexibility or a defined end date for the extra load.
  • Separate commitment from capacity. Before you read a second job or a missed stretch goal as a lack of commitment, ask what the person is carrying and what would make the work more doable.
  • Protect your managers. If your organization has flattened, check in with the managers who remain. Exhausted managers cannot translate the meaning of work for anyone else.

Frequently asked questions

What is the “two-job job”?

It is the term Fortune used for Korn Ferry’s finding that 61% of professionals are performing the responsibilities of more than one role. It often happens when organizations cut positions, including management roles, and redistribute the work to the people who remain.

Should managers worry when employees have a second job?

Not by default. The Goldman Sachs survey found that most Gen Z and Millennial respondents doing additional work said they could not make ends meet without it. The better question for a manager is whether the core standards of the role are being met, and whether the value exchange the role offers is clear and fair.

How can leaders reduce employee workload without losing productivity?

Start by redesigning roles rather than adding tasks to them. Define what good work looks like, decide where AI-saved time should go, and stop rewarding visible busyness over meaningful results. As Lesley Uren of Korn Ferry put it, growth does not come from just asking people to do more.

The design is the message

People read the design of their work as a message. A role that keeps growing without explanation says something. So does a paycheck that requires a second job to make it work. Leaders do not control the economy, but they do control how clearly work is defined, what it asks and what it offers in return.

That is the shift I keep coming back to in The Next Turn. The task is not to ask for more. It is to design work people can actually carry and actually believe in.

So here is my question for you: if you looked at the roles on your team today, how many of them are really two jobs wearing one title?

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