The Error Of Expecting Employees To Go Above And Beyond

Unsurprisingly, a corporate culture bent towards higher profits with each year or quarter would facilitate pressuring or threatening as much output from workers as possible.  This would not necessarily stop just because the desired outcome is beyond the scope of a job's actual duties or formal expectations.  In some less hostile environments, the urge for workers to universally go "above and beyond" is still treated like it is a philosophically valid idea.  Ironically, this is made the expected norm for all employees in some circles, when it is exactly what the wording implies.  Above and beyond is more than what is obligatory or needed.

It is wholly optional for an employee to do more than is required to fulfill their fundamental job duties, and they would have no reason to by default do more than is necessary other than increased compensation—though some employers might think that only prolonged periods of going above and beyond make an employee deserving of consideration for a potential raise.  If a new position or spectrum of job responsibilities is formally arranged with corresponding higher pay or improved benefits, then this is another matter.  Not every employer is willing to entice or reward workers with such things, however.  They might contrarily be slanderous, dismissive, or irritable towards employees who simply do what they need to and no more.

"Punishing" employees for not going above and beyond, which could not be justified since by nature going above and beyond is not required (whether morally or pragmatically), could include denying them raises that are deserved on a cost of living or seniority basis wholly apart from a personal accomplishment that goes further than the indispensable tasks of the job.  This would penalize people for not doing what is objectively unnecessary in order to perform their role, or even to execute their role with genuine and consistent excellence.  All it accomplishes is giving an irrational employer or manager an invalid excuse to regard workers with suspicion when they do not go past the line.

Of course many employers would want their workers to go above and beyond: more is done for the former without any automatic increase in benefit, such as monetary compensation, for the latter!  The same employees and likely the same level of compensation are generating much greater returns!  Without expending any more financial resources or hiring additional people no matter how needed more staffing is, this sort of employer would love to get away with allowing other people to exhaust themselves, whether for the sake of a hopeful raise/promotion or the asinine idea that professional labor must always deserve such excess, to help their company.