How to avoid dead-end work at work (without endangering your work)

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Every job has a variety of expected obligations, some of which Perhaps Useful, long-term, To earn You are promoted —Some of them never.. For example, if you are a teacher, by designing and implementing a new curriculum, promotionProbably not while volunteering your time for extracurricular activities.. Both are important to the overall functioning of the school, but one is more likely than the other to directly benefit your career. Economists Dead-end task “task that cannot be promoted”.

Tasks that cannot be promoted are important, but do not lead to promotion

Similar to office chores such as party planning and taking notes. Or be a person who keeps a break In a coffee-rich room, these are tasks that are important for the smooth functioning of the workplace, but do not contribute to long-term success at work.

“This is all the work done in an organization that helps the organization but not the individual performing the task,” he said. Lise VesterlundUniversity of Pittsburgh Economist and co-author of the book No club: Stop women’s dead-end jobs.. This is lowRevenue clients, doing behind-the-scenes work to make presentations more sophisticatedOr assist onboarding.

Women are doing a disproportionate amount of this work

As studies show, women do disproportionate amounts of non-promotional work. “Women make up a much larger proportion of this job in all the organizations we look at,” Vesterlund said. “At one of the professional services companies we worked with, women spent 200 hours more on non-promotional work than their male colleagues did. It’s the equivalent of more than a month’s work a year. doing.”

Women will do these tasks disproportionately for many reasons. This includes women being asked more often and being seen more severely by saying “no”.

“Women aren’t doing this job because they’re essentially good at it or they’re essentially enjoying it more. They expect all of us to do the job, so women I’m working, “said Vesterlund. “One of the studies we did found that women were required to do this job almost 50% more than men.”

It is important to recognize that this is a widespread problem and is a problem that occurs in all workplaces. In other words, it should be the responsibility of the entire organization, not one person, to fix the problem.

At the systematic level, this means finding a way to evenly distribute these tasks, or assigning them to people whose promotion is due to completing the tasks. For example, holding a meeting does not promote you if you are a faculty member, but you will be promoted if you work in a managerial position. “Raising awareness can go a long way,” Vesterlund said.

Identify dead-end tasks

That said, for these dead-end tasks, there are specific strategies that can be adopted to keep them at a manageable level. First, Vesterlund and her colleagues recommend that you take a closer look at how you spend your time at work.

write After taking down all the tasks and obligations that occupy your time Classify They from a promotional point of view. Some tasks are directly related to promotionalness, others are moderately promotional, while others are not at all.

“There are various promotions,” he said. Laurie WeingertProfessor of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the co-authors of the book.

Overall, you want to strive for a good balance. Everyone needs to do some non-promotional work because it’s important to the overall functioning of the workplace, but I don’t want to overwhelm the work to be promoted.

Focus on using your skills wisely

Once you know which task is more facilitating than the others The next step is to identify where you need to go Discuss with your boss To ensure You are spending time in the way that best suits your skills.

“This is an opportunity to sit down with your boss to review your work portfolio and ask them to help you rebalance your portfolio work,” Weingart said... “Managers want to get the most out of all their employees. They are often unaware of the cumulative impact of all these non-promotable tasks on a single individual. ”