Invisible work, non-promotable tasks, and “volunteer opportunities” (more often volun-told), are an unfortunate reality in the workforce. There are three things every employer should do in relation to these tasks: minimize them, acknowledge them, and distribute them equitably.
Unfortunately, the reality is pretty far from this ideal. Some estimates state up to 75% or more of these time-sucking, minimally career beneficial activities are typically foisted on women in the workplace and are a leading driver behind burnout in female employees. The sinister thing about this is most people are completely blind to these factors; it’s referred to as invisible work for a reason.
Research from Harvard Business Review* found that 44% more requests are presented to women as compared to men for “non-promotable” or volunteer tasks at work. Non-promotable tasks are activities such as planning holiday events, coordinating workplace social activities, and other ‘office housework’ style activities that benefit the office but typically don’t provide career returns on the time invested. The work of the ‘office mom’ often goes unacknowledged or, if she’s lucky, maybe garners some brief lip service. Don’t be that boss that gives someone a 50hr workload task for a 2-second dose of “oh yeah thanks for doing a bajillion hours of work on this thing I will never acknowledge again and won’t help your career.” Yes, that’s a thing. Don’t do it. If you do it, don’t be surprised when you have more vacancies than staff. You brought that on yourself.
There is a lot of top-tier talent out there in the market right now. To be competitive, consider implementing some culture renovations so you can have a more equitable, and therefore more attractive, work culture to retain your top talent.
What we want to do:
- Identify and minimize invisible work in your organization
- Acknowledge the work that can’t be avoided. Get rid of the blind part.
- Distribute the work equitably.
Here is a simple example:
Step 1: Set up a way for staff to anonymously bring things to your attention. Perhaps a comment box. Encourage staff to bring unsung heroes in the office to your attention. Things they wish their peers or they themselves received acknowledgment for.
Step 2: Read them and actually take them seriously. Block out some time on your calendar and give it your full attention.
For the sake of demonstration, let’s say someone leaves a note about how Caroline always tidies up the breakroom at the end of the day and cleans the coffee pot with supplies Caroline brings from home. Now that we have identified a task, we are going to acknowledge it, minimize it, and consider the distribution of labor.
Step 3: Thank Caroline at the team meeting for scrubbing yesterday’s burnt coffee out of the bottom of the pot every day. Don’t gloss over it. Make the acknowledgment mean something. Buy her some chips out of the vending machine or something. The smallest gestures can have the biggest impact when coupled with actual change.
Step 4: Remind your staff to clean up after themselves. Caroline isn’t their mom. If you have to, enforce it.
Step 5: Put it in the office budget to provide adequate cleaning supplies for the break room and review your custodial needs. This isn’t part of Caroline’s job description and she could be putting that energy towards something else. Find the why of the situation and address it.
You might be rolling your eyes at me by now, but the toll of this unpaid invisible work has real costs. According to the 2021 Women in the Workplace Report* the ladies are carrying the team, but getting little to none of the credit. Burnout is real and ringing in at an all-time high across every sector of the economy. To be short, women are sick and tired of getting the raw end of the deal, and after 2 years of pandemic life bringing it into ultra-sharp focus, are doing something about it. In the report, 40% of ladies were considering jumping ship. Data indicates that a lot of them not only manned the lifeboats but landed more lucrative positions than they left. Now is the time to score and then retain top talent. However, it is up to you to make sure you are offering an environment worth working in.
*Note: the studies cited here do not differentiate non-cis-identifying persons. It is usually worse for individuals in the LGBTQIA+ community.
CJ Johnson
August 27, 2013 at 10:18 am
I would take this article a bit more seriously if you did not use a photo of a typical stereo type Blonde/Blue white girl with perfect teeth. The younger generation seems to talk a good game when
it comes to diversity but they consistently use images like this one to promote their goods and products including their blogs. Good story, bad image. P.S. I am a Blonde so I can knock my own image.
Lani Rosales
August 27, 2013 at 10:39 am
Hey @disqus_ZMz8pPgbHr:disqus thank you so much for adding your voice to this column, I appreciate your taking the time to opine!
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I’ve been thinking for a few minutes about your commentary and thought I would respond. First, getting stuck on the image is exactly the problem in the workforce that I’m addressing – people obsess over image and not substance, so if my daughter or yours doesn’t go ask for that promotion, the hot blonde could get it because she did or because she’s hotter.
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Second, although this is one of many letters to my daughter in this series and images of all races, ages and genders are used, I picked this specific image because it shows a young woman in front of a diverse group behind her, which is exactly where I hope my daughter will be because she worked her tail off.
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I hope we can avoid focusing on the shallow view and look more deeply into the image, past the girl. 🙂
CJ Johhnson
September 25, 2013 at 12:50 pm
HI Lani: Yes my point is the old if it bleeds it leads and while I totally agreed with your atricle I know in today’s microwave minute society they often do not get past the headline or the photos.
Lani Rosales
September 25, 2013 at 3:39 pm
While I agree, sometimes we use pictures of Indian women, other times African American ladies, some old, some young, some beautiful, some not… if we excluded the pretty blonde (that my pretty daughter can relate to), are we guilty that discrimination? Help me to better understand?
Tinu
September 18, 2013 at 1:08 pm
Funny, @disqus_ZMz8pPgbHr:disqus – I didn’t even register the image when I read the story. I’m not as visual as most people though. Plus my focus was on “why would something Lani wrote only have two comments.” In my view diversity includes everyone, so we should still end up with some blond haired, blue eyed people. Which is why I think the concept of color blindness is wrong. But I digress.
The most poignant thing about your article to me, Lani, is that even if your daughter does all those things, she still might not get what she wants professionally, because companies rarely operate based on fairness. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I know as a woman, particularly as a black woman, most people would think I should have the classic ideas about diversity and fairness. Generally I do.
But in the area of human resources and hiring, I think we should stop pretending that people even understand that affirmative action was meant to be a door stop, not a quota enforcement system. It has Never operated like that, even in government. The popular perception is that it does, and the popular perception was that before the gender and racial diversification of the workplace, things were fair – and so movements for job equality attempt to inject additional fairness on top of that.
You’re so right though, much more right than you realize, when you educate your daughter that these ideas of fairness are fictions. It was never, ever equal. I wonder sometimes, instead of trying to make it more fair, our energies would be better spent in exercises like refuting the fictions the world tells our kids, so they can better navigate around them until we all come up with something better.