When flexibility is unevenly provided, employees don’t just notice; it changes how they relate to one another. Imagine this scenario: Your team has been told that it’s time to return to the office after years of flexibility due to the pandemic. There are grumblings and then people begin rearranging their childcare, commutes, and routines.
Except for one colleague.
Not long ago, a manager casually mentioned something in a team meeting. “Just as everyone knows, Chris will continue working from home full-time.” There was no explanation, no follow-up, just a quick line before the meeting moved on.
No one protested out loud. No one complained to HR. Team messages stayed polite. And yet, over the following weeks, something shifted. Collaboration felt colder. Small frustrations escalated more quickly. People became less willing to step in when someone needed help. Nothing dramatic happened but the team no longer felt like a team.
The Rise of Personalized Work Deals
The arrangement Chris received has a name in the research literature: an idiosyncratic deal, or i-deal. These are the voluntary, personalized agreements employees negotiate with their managers, like flexible hours, specialized assignments, tailored development opportunities, etc. They have become increasingly common as organizations recognize that common employment contracts struggle to attract and retain top talent.
The individual benefits of i-deals are well-documented. Employees who successfully negotiate them tend to be more engaged, more committed, and higher-performing. The upside of offering them is strong. But i-deals, by definition, are not available to everyone. And when some team members have them and others don’t, the distribution gap becomes its own force. It shapes how teammates relate to one another in ways that quietly ripple out.
New research, conducted across two field studies with hundreds of service teams in the U.S. and China finds that the unevenness of i-deals within a team can either hold a group together or drive it apart. The type of deal an employee gets—a flexibility deal, a task deal, or a career deal—matters more than the number of employees getting the deal.
Not All Differences Are Created Equal
The study examined three common categories of i-deals: career deals (access to coaching, development, and advancement pathways); flexibility deals (customized schedules and hours); and task deals (customized job content tailored to a person’s strengths and interests). Each type, when distributed unevenly across a team, produces a different outcome.
Flexibility deals, which are the most popular and hardest to deny, are also the most dangerous to distribute unevenly. When some team members enjoyed flexible schedules while others did not, relationship conflict within the team rose significantly, and that conflict translated directly into lower service quality and declining customer satisfaction.
Task deals told a very different story. When employees had differentiated assignments, with some handling complex work, and others more structured duties, conflict actually decreased. Those teams outperformed the standard on customer outcomes. Career deals showed no significant effect in either direction, although context matters.
These contrasting outcomes raise an important question: Why does one kind of inequality bind a team together while another pulls it apart? The answer lies in how people interpret the differences they observe.
The Social Mirror: How We Measure Our Worth
We measure our standing not in absolute terms, but relative to those around us. In a team setting, colleagues are the primary yardstick. According to social comparison theory (Wood, 1996), when we notice a difference, we move through three mental stages: We acquire the information, we think about what it means for us, and we react emotionally.
Take for example Chris’s work-from-home deal. His colleagues acquire information by observing. If they don’t see him in the office they might think, “Is Chris home today?” At that point a thought might pop into their heads: “Am I covering his in-person duties? Is he more valued than I am?” This naturally might lead to feeling upset, frustrated, or irritated, and would ultimately reflect how they behave towards him and their manager.
With flexibility i-deals, the thinking stage is where things go wrong. Because teamwork is interdependent, one person’s flexible schedule can feel like a burden to everyone else. Without a clear rationale from leadership, teammates fill the gap with their own interpretations, and those interpretations tend to skew negative. Is it favoritism? Special treatment? The resulting friction is what psychologists call relationship conflict: interpersonal tension that has nothing to do with the work itself, and everything to do with how people feel about each other.
Task i-deals follow a different cognitive path. When a colleague takes on more complex work while others handle structured operational tasks, the arrangement feels intentional rather than preferential. The division serves the team’s function. Most members experience role clarity, and even those without the more prominent assignments can see how the structure benefits the group. The social comparison, rather than generating resentment, generates shared understanding.
What Managers and HR Leaders Should Do
The story of Chris and his colleagues does not end with a formal complaint or a dramatic falling out. It ends with something quieter and harder to reverse: a team that stopped feeling like one. Understanding why i-deal inequality affects teams differently points to concrete actions organizations can take to avoid that outcome.
- Be transparent. When selective flexibility is granted, the explanation matters as much as the decision itself. In the Chris scenario, the manager announced the arrangement without context. That silence left teammates to fill the gap with their own interpretations. Managers should communicate their reasoning clearly and frame the arrangement in terms of team benefit, not individual exception. HR can support this by establishing clear eligibility criteria and communication protocols before the situation arises.
- Use task differentiation deliberately. Instead of treating customized task assignments as informal accommodations, managers can deploy them as a tool for building role clarity. Openly discussing who is doing what and why transforms individual deals into a shared team structure. When employees understand the role architecture, they collaborate more smoothly and step on each other’s toes.
Career Deals Are Not Safe to Ignore
The research found no average effect from uneven career development deals, but that doesn’t mean they’re harmless in every context. Teams with competitive climates or members who hold zero-sum views of advancement may react more sharply to perceived inequity in growth opportunities. In those environments, ensuring that employees without career deals still have access to formal development resources is essential.
Personalized employment is not going anywhere. Employees increasingly expect a say in the terms of their work, and an organization that offers it gains a real competitive advantage. The lesson from the Chris scenario is not that managers should stop offering flexible arrangements. It’s that every individual deal exists inside a team context, and that context has consequences. Some arrangements can help build the teams from ground up. Others can erode them, one unacknowledged exception at a time.
Business Style Takeaway: Understanding how the distribution of personalized work arrangements (“i-deals”) impacts team dynamics is crucial. While flexibility i-deals, when unevenly applied, can foster resentment and decrease performance, thoughtfully structured task differentiation can enhance collaboration by clarifying roles. Leaders must prioritize transparency and strategic implementation to leverage individual agreements for collective gain.
Source: : www.psychologytoday.com