Ladies, doing this reduces your chances of promotion at work

This article might be of great help for women professionals who aspire to climb the corporate ladder. According to a study mentioned in Harvard Business Review, women do this innocent mistake in their job that reduces their chances of getting promoted.

As per the research, women employees perform ‘non-promotable tasks’ that might make them bond better with their colleagues or even help the organisation but do not improve their work performance or add to their existing set of skills.

The non-promotable tasks are also termed as 'office housework' that have little visibility and do not contribute in one’s career growth. These include planning and executing for an office party or an off-site, filling in for a colleague, being active in low-ranking committees or doing the routine tasks that have low productivity.

For instance, in an industry, working on revenue-generating assignments increases your chances of promotion than being an active part of non-revenue generating tasks, right? Similarly, research-related work is more promotable than service-relation in the academic sector.

The study headed by authors Linda Babcock, Maria Recalde, Lise Vesterlund and Laurie Weingart, revealed that women were 48 per cent more likely to volunteer for such tasks than their male counterparts.

Not just this, female employees received 44 per cent more requests to do these non-promotable tasks than males and their manager’s gender had nothing to do with it.

The study points towards one of the major reasons why men dominate the high-ranking positions. While the male employees accepted such requests 51 per cent of the time, on the other hand, women accepted such requests 76 per cent of the time.

The research makes it pretty evident that saying ‘no’ (or working on such non-promotable tasks in your spare time) to such tasks will help an employee to concentrate better on tasks that count and in turn, improve her work performance.

It is always a good idea to hold a discussion with your senior and talk about how this work might reduce your productivity and isn’t a part of your profile. You can also highlight what all projects and assignments you are already working on and even suggest someone who might be willing to do the work.

In case you find it difficult to decline such requests, you can always suggest set up rotation of such tasks. While you can take the initiative and take out some time to perform such work, make sure someone else take up this task the next time.

(All images used here are representational)