Gihan Hyde’s Post

  😥😥 Women are more likely to volunteer for a non-promotable task at work, than men. Non promotable tasks (NPTs) are the pieces of work that are good for the organization, but not so good for the individual. 😡😡 It’s the request from your boss to champion the sustainability initiatives even though you don’t care much about it, organize the holiday party, or the task of ordering sandwiches for the team lunch, or the mission of being on the review committee. 👿👿 And the problem, is that women are doing most of these non-promotable tasks for no reason other than people expect them to. These tasks do not contribute to the women’s career advancement nor will it result in upskilling them, and even worse sometimes they don’t even believe in the importance of the task because they have to juggle between their full time job and the NPTs. 😧😧 The above resonated with me when listening to my all-time favourite podcast “Behavioural Grooves” as its VERY TRUE and I see it all the time when advising our clients on their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives. 😩😩 We all know that these ESG and sustainability initiatives won’t work without employees and leaders driving it from the bottom up and top down, but for some reason which was clear to me until now, the majority of the #sustainability champions I interacted with were women and when speaking to them during our focus groups it was always clear that their managers asked them to volunteer and some were awarded a small monetary reward for accepting the task. Sustainability and ESG initiatives will not have an impact if the persons driving them internally are over worked and undervalued because they won’t see the big picture or the importance of their roles. 💪🏽💪🏽 To avoid the above from happening here are some recommendations: 1.      Rotate the responsibility of embedding ESG within your organisation between employees from all genders. This responsibility should not fall in the shoulder of a handful of employees.   2.      Embed this new responsibility within the career advancement plan. For example, if the employee is an administrator, he/she can be upskilled in project management tools to manage the initiative in their department. Give them an incentive to excel in this role. 3.      Explain the role they play in moving the strategic ESG and business growth dial. We do like to feel valued and important as human beings. What do you think about the above? #employeeengagement #womenempowerment #esg