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.
Eric Hempler
July 26, 2011 at 7:16 am
To me it always seemed like ActiveRain was a way to interact with other agents and not a lead generating tool. Why pay a monthly subscription to it when you can have a free blog? Then if you go to a self hosted route you have even more freedom to SEO the sucker.
Park City Home Search
July 26, 2011 at 9:02 am
Might as well use the information you write to generate leads or else you are just wasting your time. Although there is significant link value from AR links.
sfvrealestate
July 26, 2011 at 11:52 am
I think all the top bloggers are now blogging for Agent Genius!
Bob Stewart
July 26, 2011 at 5:52 pm
My hunch tells me that many of those bloggers that are dormant have probably moved on to their own wordpress sites…..although some of them could be completely out of the business. Heck, over two years many real estate agents fall out of the business.
I suppose that means that 68% of them are still blogging, which is WAY higher than you would find for blogs in general across the internet. I believe the built in community at ActiveRain acts as a support network to keep people engaged with their blog. Certainly nothing wrong with that.
If you were to take a general outlook at the real estate business in general, I wonder if more than 32% of people are no longer in the business from October of 2009. My guess is yes…..which means our bloggers succeed at a higher rate than an average person not blogging? Who knows…….
Are you really using a headline for July of 2011 that is based on a study you did in October of 2009? Sensational stuff…..I love it!
Bob Stewart
July 26, 2011 at 5:54 pm
And if bloggers can start out and get their feet wet and then move on to write for great industry sites like AgentGenius, we love that! Tons of extremely talented writers all over the RE.net, no question!
Matt
July 26, 2011 at 10:47 pm
I changed my activerain blogging strategy when the latest changes to the google search algorithm (the Panda updated) went into effect.
I used to duplicate much of my local content and tweak it slightly for activerain, but with google now seriously frowning upon duplicate content, it seemed better to try and put SEO juice back into my main website.
End result is I blog at active rain a whole lot less than I used to.
Cheers,
Matt
Lyn Sims
July 31, 2011 at 10:50 am
Who's Agent Genius? 😉 I just disagree & I am sure that a certain portion of the top bloggers have moved on thru regular attrition. A few I know of personally stopped selling real estate, moved to a different part of the country and are ??. What they still wrote in the past is good quality material. Your survey seemed flawed as Bob Stewart mentions as it is so ancient. 2 months ago is agent in blogging standards.
There are plenty of active agents that still produce great posts but each agent has their maximum content ability. Kristal Kraft hasn't posted for over a month – that's not exactly active.
Angie @AgentKnowHow
August 2, 2011 at 8:09 pm
I created my AR profile years ago and one of the things that frustrated me then was how it turned into a breeding ground for xyz solicitation. I know AR was not at fault, but I was initially discouraged. I don't understand the points system. Are the points redeemable? The overall layout of the Blogs themselves is very "old school." With self-hosted wordpress sites and Facebook Groups and I dare say other networks like twitter and LinkedIn, the competiton for my attention, time and budget is pretty steep. Lately, I have read a couple of agents complain that AR was down. Not sure what's the cause of this downtime, but I believe the company needs a clearly defined direction if it intends to survice the social world of 2011 and beyond.