Reciprocity

Every employment relationship has a floor written into it: the hours, the responsibilities, the standard below which the arrangement fails. Almost everything valuable happens above that floor, the problem someone raises before it becomes a crisis, the handover done properly, the idea offered in a meeting where it was not requested. None of it can be required, which is why it is governed by reciprocity rather than by policy.

The return does not have to be financial, and often is not. It can be a decision made faster because someone flagged it, credit given accurately in front of people who matter, flexibility extended without a negotiation, or a piece of work that stretches someone toward what they are trying to become. What matters is that the loop closes: effort was visible, and something came back. Recognition schemes usually fail here because they run on a separate calendar from the effort they are meant to acknowledge.

Reciprocity decays through a specific pattern. Extraordinary effort is absorbed without comment, becomes the new baseline, and is then expected. The employee does not resign in protest; they quietly reset to the floor. From the outside, nothing has happened, the work still gets done, the metrics hold, which is exactly what makes the decay hard to see.