How to make sure your time at work is well spent

In a previous post, How to improve your career with one magic word, I explored the challenges of women taking on more than their fair share of non-promotable tasks (NTPs). Investing too much time in these activities can negatively impact on your career progression. Here I explore how to identify the proportion of time you spend on work unlikely to contribute to your career progression. The approaches suggested here are taken from ‘The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead End Work’ which is well worth a read.

Account for your time

By undertaking an analysis of how you spend your time at work, you can calculate the proportion of the time you allocate to NTPs. Capture all the activities you undertake in a typical week- or a month if that makes more sense for you.

1. Create a grid with 3 columns and several rows
2. Column headings: Your tasks, the hours per week/month you spend on them and finally whether these activities are linked to promotability (rank these as Low, Medium or High)
3. In the first column group the tasks you undertake under key headings. For example, your main role and related activities,  administrative work, committee work, specific projects, and helping others with their work
4. Allocate the amount of time you spend on each- the total should add up to the hours you work each week

Who does what?

• How much of your time do you spend on NTPs?
• Do you spend a disproportionate amount of time on these as opposed to your main job role?
• How do your colleagues in similar roles spend their time?
• Looking at the NTPs on your list, are these evenly distributed across your team?
• Is there a gender divide in terms of the amount of time male and female colleagues spend on NTPs?

Now add a 4th column.

How did you end up with the NTPs you have?

• Did you volunteer? (V)
• Were you asked? (A)
• Was something assigned or delegated to you? (D)

What is the professional cost of too many NTPs?

Looking at your grid:

Are you are undertaking a disproportionate amount of NTPs? Does your organisation have formal expectations of the time to be spent on NTPs? And is this having an impact on your professional development?

For example:

• Have you applied for, but been unsuccessful in applying for promotional posts?
• Have you stopped developing and growing within your professional role?
• Have you had lack-lustre performance management reviews?
• Are you over-tired from taking on too much additional work?

Equitable distribution of NTPs

Where it’s clear that the balance of NTPs is unequal within your team, consider discussing this with your line manager. There will always be a need for this work to be done. Exploring how tasks are allocated may open up a dialogue which makes it possible for individuals as well as line managers to consciously consider how work is shared out more equitably.

How to reduce the time you spend on NTPs

My next post will explore the reasons why women take on more NTPs than their male colleagues and looks at the different ways you can say ‘no’ without it damaging your career prospects.