- Minorities are disproportionally assigned "office housework", according to author Alan Henry.
- Being consistently assigned these tasks can lower your chances of promotion.
- Keeping an office diary and prioritizing team goals are two ways to escape office housework.
At work, some tasks are less glamorous than others.
The employee who books the meeting rooms or takes notes won't get the same recognition as the one who presents the results of that meeting to senior management.
This is the distinction between office housework and glamor work that Alan Henry wants to define in his upcoming book "Seen, Heard and Paid."
"Glamor work is always that work that gets you attention, it gets you recognized by your manager and by their manager. It gets you promoted and paid more," Henry said.
Doing this glamor work allows employees to climb the career ladder, but not all workers have the same access to it.
Office housework is disproportionally assigned to minorities, he says, while the glamor work is often kept out of reach.
Insider previously reported that working women spend an average of 200 hours a year on tasks that don't lead to promotions, according to a study conducted by four US economists, such as taking notes, booking rooms, and DEI work.
Being consistently assigned office housework can have a serious impact on your career. The work goes largely unnoticed by senior staff and spending too much on low-impact tasks can mean missing out on bigger opportunities that lead to promotions.
Here's how to make sure you land high-impact work, according to Henry.
1. Identify what is important to the team
One definition of office housework is work that does not directly contribute to a company or an employee's goals.
This does not mean the work is unimportant to the organization, but they are often not part of anyone's formal job description.
"It's important work and it keeps the team going. But it's not the kind of work that will get them promoted," Alan Henry said.
Taking notes, planning meetings, and onboarding employees are all examples of this kind of work.
"Marginalized folks and workers of color get stuck with the office housework," Henry said. "The office housework is the stuff that they wind up having to do over and over again."
His first advice is to get proactive when prioritizing a workload.
"One thing I always tell people is to make sure that what they're doing aligns with not just their personal priorities but their team's priorities. Try and find a way to frame up the work you're doing in terms of overall team success."
He advised asking a manager which tasks were a priority for them, and then communicating that you want to be taken off lesser, housework-like tasks to help achieve those top priorities.
"If you're a worker of color and marginalized, you're gonna have to soften that a bit like and say something along the lines of "I'd really like to work on this but ABC is taking up so much of my time that I can't devote my full self to it," he said.
2. Keep a work diary
Keeping a diary of your work on a daily or weekly basis can help you track what kind of work you're doing, and how often you're doing it.
"It's really cathartic, but it's also data," Henry said. "And data is power."
By keeping track of the work you are assigned, you simultaneously create a record of "what your manager is assigning you versus what you wish you were doing."
Doing so can help employees build a case for breaking out of the office housework.
"If you've noticed that for the past month you're the one assigned to scheduling all the weekly meetings, ordering lunch for the weekly team meetings, or scheduling all-hands meetings. If all that stuff seems to be rolling to you. You now have data to go to your manager," Henry said.
"Putting that information together takes you from making a very emotional appeal to a manager who may not be swayed by emotions to a logical one where you have the information in front of your boss, and they can't really refute it."