[richardwhiuk]

I can imagine this happens due to malicious-ness, but it seems unlikely.

Individual contributions are necessarily easier to measure and easier to attribute than force-multiplication or communication, so it's going to be easier / less work for managers to pull them out at review time.

Sadly, that means that you need to highlight your own work (in a vaguely PR/Marketing) way that you don't have to for individual contributions.

That means that you both have to communicate well to other engineers "look at this easy way to save 10% of your time", but also communicate the effects of that to management so they'll a) reward you for it and b) invest in making it happen.

None of that is "easy".