This paper identifies an underexplored managerial practice – the differential allocation of opportunities in task assignment – as a source of productivity heterogeneity among employees. We define opportunities for productivity (simplified as opportunities in this paper) as a set of favorable conditions that can potentially increase the maximum productivity achievable by employees in certain tasks. Despite the widespread existence of opportunity differences across similar tasks, their effect on employee productivity have not been theorised about or empirically studied. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the impact of assigning employees to perform tasks in high-opportunity conditions (vs. low-opportunity conditions) affect their future productivity, as well as the underlying mechanisms. By utilizing server-level transaction data from a restaurant chain, we develop a novel empirical strategy to examine how employees’ productivity changes pre- and post- their temporary assignment to work in a high-opportunity condition – specifically, serving tables in a popular section with potential for higher sales and tips. Our findings indicate that even temporarily assigning servers to serve tables in a high-opportunity section leads to an increase in their hourly sales in subsequent periods when they are assigned back to low-opportunity sections. Further empirical analysis and interviews with managers suggest that the productivity boost appears to stem from both skill acquisition and motivation enhancement.
