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Non-promotable tasks are things that are important to the organisation but will not help advance your career. In summary, it's dead-end work. And women are particularly prone to taking it on, writes Maja Smith.
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Since I've moved into a more senior position at work, I've had numerous women approach me – both personally and professionally – about how to deal with being overlooked. They work hard and smart, moving the needle in countless ways, but they do it all in the background.
I've spent most of my career at various organisations feeling the same way. I started out telling myself that I preferred being in the background because that's where the real influence lies (newsflash: it doesn't).
I thought that doing work for senior members of these organisations – work that would make them shine – was critical to my own career advancement (newsflash: it wasn't).
I was grateful, even honoured, every time a senior leader at these many institutions asked me to clean up a presentation, take meeting minutes, run an event or draft an agenda. I thought that being in control of the background was where I could be at my most powerful (newsflash: it isn't!).
Unfortunately, this experience is not unique. Studies show that women spend on average 200 hours more a year than men on non-promotable tasks*. Non-promotable tasks (NPTs) are things that are important to the organisation but will not help advance your career. They are usually non-revenue generating, not recognised in performance reviews, and do not rely on specialised skills.
Why do we do it?
Over the holidays I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and came across the concept of 'Weaponised Incompetence', which according to Gen Z has been around forever (i.e. at least three months), but which I found incredibly illuminating because it put a name to something that I think I've subconsciously always known.
The goal is to remove ownership and accountability and ultimately, never to be asked to do it again.
Research says that this behaviour is often seen in heterosexual relationships, with men leveraging it against their female partners. The online examples of this are as sad as they are hilarious. I was simultaneously laughing and crying watching the #weaponisedincompetence Instagram reels, drawing parallels to my own home and work life.
Recently I asked my husband to hang up the washing. He did do it – but it was more of a flinging than a hanging, which obviously meant it didn’t dry quickly and even more obviously meant I haven’t asked him since. I’ve also once drawn him a map through (not to) the grocery store so that he could do our food shop in under two hours.
To be fair, I myself use weaponised incompetence when it comes to changing lightbulbs.
It's fascinating how, when sitting in a boardroom, body language changes when certain pieces of work come up – in particular, when a volunteer is required for something that is clearly an NPT. It is usually not the women who become very busy on their phones. Again, this is not something unique to big corporates – I've seen this in every company I've ever worked in, and in every school meeting I've ever attended where what will inevitably turn out to be a 'class-mom' is elected.
It is only since last year that I finally learnt to (silently) say no – often by quite literally sitting on my hands to avoid volunteering myself. And the more I do it, the easier it gets and the more time and energy I have to do the work that really moves the business forward. In fact, the growth of my career is inversely proportional to the amount of NPTs I've taken on.
We can write this all off to Venus & Mars, laugh about it and move on, but doing that has serious consequences for our careers. Spending an additional month a year on dead-end work puts us on an entirely different trajectory for promotions. Couple this with the fact that most of us are dealing with weaponised incompetence in our home environments too and it's no wonder we're overwhelmed. We are working more and we are working harder – both at work and at home – to prop up the status quo.
Because guess what? Women don't enjoy hanging up washing. We don't love dressing the kids. We don't revel in cleaning up presentations and capturing meeting minutes. We are also not better at it.
Women need to be comfortable enough to say no, and the more we do it the easier it gets.
But men need to do better too. Both at work and at home. Men need to step up and do the dead-end work because it does actually need to get done – and it's not good enough to make excuses or justify a lack of engagement by assuming women enjoy/ are better at/ are born to do drudge work. It is not hard.
Weaponised Incompetence is what leads to women taking on more NPTs. Which also means it's not (just) us ladies – we are not solely to blame for 'volunteering' ourselves for dead-end work. We need to say no, but we also need to hold our male colleagues and partners accountable for their part in the glaring inequalities that continue to exist at work and at home.
PS: My husband has started taking minutes at work. We're still working on the washing.
Maja Smith is National After Sales Manager at Ford Motor Company South Africa. News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.
Sources:
- Solve the issue of women doing more dead end work tasks at CNBC
- 3 ways women can and should say no to dead end work in Forbes
