Invisible Work, Invisible Impact

Hana Ngo
Executive & Team coach

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Making Invisible Work Visible: A Guide for Women in Tech

Welcome to our blog, where we focus on empowering women in technology to achieve their fullest potential in the workplace. In this post, we draw insights from a recent workshop led by Hannah, a seasoned executive coach and a founding member of Women in Tech. In this post, we explore the invisible work many women do, why it often goes unrecognized, and practical tools to make this work visible.

Understanding Invisible Work

Invisible work refers to tasks and contributions that are essential for a team's success but are often overlooked in performance evaluations and recognition. Women, in particular, spend over 200 extra hours per year on non-promotable tasks—equivalent to nearly a full month of work. Research shows that:

  • 48% of women are more likely to volunteer for tasks that no one else wants to do.
  • 44% of managers (regardless of gender) tend to assign women non-promotable tasks.

This scenario creates a cycle where women's contributions remain unrecognized, hindering career advancement. To break this cycle, action must start from within.

Reflecting on Your Invisible Work

Hannah encourages participants to audit their own work. Here’s a simple exercise to identify your invisible work:

  1. Write down three recurring tasks you perform that keep your team running but aren't part of your goals or promotion packet.
  2. Estimate how many hours or days you spend on these tasks each week.

Once you've completed this exercise, take a moment to reflect on which of these tasks could be delegated to others and which you could say no to. Recognizing that it’s okay to let go of certain responsibilities is crucial for personal development.

Changing Behavior: A Personal Responsibility

Part of addressing the issue of invisible work is recognizing our own behavior. Here are some questions to consider:

  • Which tasks can be completed by someone else?
  • Which of these tasks could be eliminated or delegated?

Reflecting on your work habits enables you to not only lighten your personal workload but also to empower your teammates.

Making Invisible Work Visible: A Three-Step Method

To effectively showcase the value of your contributions, Hannah proposes a three-step method:

  1. Define a Metric: Choose metrics that align with organizational values, such as speed, quality, reliability, or team satisfaction.
  2. Instrument It Lightly: Make it easy to track your contributions, perhaps in a simple notebook or using a project management tool.
  3. Route It to Your Decision Forum: Identify where you can showcase these metrics, such as team meetings or performance reviews.

By actively measuring and reporting your successes, you shift the focus onto your contributions, making them more visible to leadership and your peers.

Creating Impact Beyond Individual Contributions

Consider other areas within your organization where invisible work occurs. This includes:

  • Team coordination and facilitation
  • Customer success initiatives
  • Project management tasks

Understanding the breadth of invisible work helps to build a comprehensive picture of where contributions are made and empowers you to assert your role in these efforts.

Amplifying Others' Invisible Work

As you work on making your invisible work visible, consider how you can help amplify the contributions of your teammates, especially other women or caregivers. Ask yourself:

  • How can you publicly acknowledge their efforts?
  • What actions can you take to ensure they receive credit for their work?

By helping others, you create a supportive environment that encourages growth for everyone involved.

Conclusion: Embrace Your Contributions

The landscape of workplaces is evolving, and the value of invisible work is increasingly recognized. As Hannah says, “Career growth shouldn't depend on who volunteers for the 7 AM shift.” Together, let’s commit to showcasing and celebrating our contributions. Start today; take the time to reflect, measure, and amplify the work of yourself and others, transforming the invisible into the visible.

Share your thoughts with us! What strategies have you used to recognize your invisible work, or how do you amplify the contributions of others? Feel free to leave your


Video Transcription

Okay. So let's start.We have about twenty minute for today's sessions, and I would like to interact with you as much as possible because the session is all about you. Right? So my name is Hannah. I'm one of the founding member from Women in Tech and also from Grow Future Leader, and I had been coaching team and organizations and leaders in the last twenty years. Today, I would like to share with you one of the tools for you to identify the invisible work that you've done and how you can make it visible. And I'm having the second screen. Just so you know if I'm looking away, just let me know if you cannot hear well or see well.

So the first thing I would like to say with you first is, as you probably already know, skill is like a marshal. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. It goes the same with the skill of making the invisible work visible. So I already said with you in the beginning very shortly. Name's Hannah. I'm executive and team coach, also master coach, founding member of Women Tech Network, as well as executive coach. I'm also a coach supervisor, mentor, and trainer. I wrote a book, which is about team structure to strengths. You can scan it and find it on Amazon. As you probably know, women spend more than two hundred extra hours per year on nonpromo table work.

The goal today is to give you some practical tool to help you make the effort visible and learn how to say no. So as you know, I had once coaches one of the team lead, and her role is quite furry. It is difficult to measure what she done, and it's difficult for her to be promoted as well. For example, when they are preparing for launching a product, her one of her role is actually onboarding one of the new members, but it does not sell on the slides. So after they launch the product, the customer is happy, and the numbers of incident has been decreased. However, she has not yet been promoted. Because her works was not on the swings, it was not visible. Nobody see it. So we all know it.

The dog gardens who fix onboarding speed but isn't on the road map. The meeting facilitator who prep keep decision script, but that isn't just being helpful. The glue person who unblock everyone else and get the player feedback. So what is those stories? I'd like to invite you to take just a few seconds to think about those situations. And if you are willing to, you can say in the chats. Which stories are yours? So take a few seconds. Think about it. What is source stories in term of invisible tiles? Say it in the chat if you like. If not, that's okay as well. So it's taking just a few second to reflect on those stories. Thank you for sharing. So as you reflected, you probably noticed invisible work isn't solved. It is infrastructures. If it saves time, reduce risk, or increase throughput, increase qualities, it's impact.

We suspend not being measuring it at all. And because we didn't measure it, it's not solved. So what I would like to invite you today is just take a few minutes to reflect and audit. So for the first two I want to share with you is the second, a two minute audit. So for yourself, write out three recurring tasks you do that keeps the team running but aren't in goals or promotion package. And next to it, add as a bad guess of weekly minutes, hours, or days that you spend on it. So take a few second. Think of three recurring tasks you do that keeps the team running but aren't in goals or promotion packets.

Write it down and just make some guess on weekly minutes, hour, or days that you spend it. If you're done with that, you can either send the chat or there's less us know in the chat that you've done with the the exercise. Then we can go on to the next steps. So let's take just a few second think about it, write it down for yourself. And if you're done, you can save it as in the chat so we know that we can move on to the next step. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Kate, for saying recognize. Alright. So we are ready to the next step. And, you know, after the session, you can do the exercise yourself, and you can actually also do it weekly by yourself and for yourself. Alright.

So do you know I said in the beginning that women spend more than two hundred extra hours per year on nonpromoted work? It's about one month full time. Right? And do you know that from the research, about forty eight percent of women are more likely to volunteer for tasks no one else want to do? And managers, it doesn't matter women or men. About 44% more likely to assign women to nonpromotable dose. So let me be very honest, look into the mirror. Then part of the problem is actually ourself. Right? Because a lot of us are likely to volunteer for the task that no one else wanted to do. And because we are volunteer, the managers are more likely to assign us the nonpromoted task. So it's a legit chicken egg stories. So to change that, we need also to change our own behavior, which is hard.

But if we don't change our own behavior, then the behavior from people around us will not change. Right? So what I would like to invite you now to do is to look into the mirror and to ask ourselves the next questions. So if you will write down write down the task, I would like to invite you to think and be very critical on this. Which of those can be done by others and which of those you could say no to? So take a few seconds to reflect on that. And I know that it's deep work, it's difficult, it's challenging, but changing behavior starting from ourself. So take a few seconds and look into some mirror, look at the list, and ask yourself the questions. Which of those thoughts can be done by others?

And which of those you could say no to? Yes, Which mean that in those circumstances, we also can say no to. The choice is also ours, which is why I invite you to try this exercise because from ourselves, if we change how we behave, that also influences how environment treat us. Right? So it takes just a few seconds. I get that, Jessica. It's very common for me as well, and it's not just you. Because as a woman, then we often have the feeling that we feel responsible for it. Right? Or as a mom, you feel responsible to, helping the kids, helping the families. Being a sister and daughters, you feel uncomfortable able to let them be or let other do. Yes. Very recognizable, Abenee. So look deeper. It's also starting with us. Alright?

So reflect on that which absolve does, you could say no to. And as you said, you can see it as an early chance for opportunity to the. That also one of the other way to do it. Because when you give people the chance to do it and develop the skills, you basically are helping them as well and helping the teams to be stronger together. So if you're done with the reflection on this, let me know, then we can all move on together. You can say it in the chat about the task can be done by others or one thing that you could say no to or not as it's totally up to you. Alright. So give me some signal. If you had done, for this step, then we can move on. Thank you, Gaythena.

Thank you for the honesty because that is where the changing start with ourself. Now when we look back into ourself and reflect on these questions, then you can also think of what could be the next step for you to say no to this work. You see that work doesn't change. It's legibility did. Right? And we when you step out and step back, you give all the all sorts of chance to develop, and so team gets stronger as well. And in the meantime, when you put your time and focus on the thing that you've done well and on the thing that you can learn as well as the thing also can be visible, it helps yourself as well. So now we have already taken off the staff the stuff that you can let other do, let's take a look at the task that you want to keep.

And for that, I invite you to try the three step. The first step is define a metric that match the value from the organizations, such as speed, quality, reliability, throughput, risk, dim performance, dim happiness, all kind of that thing can be a metric that matches the value. And second step is instrument it lightly. You can either with do it with a notebook or best with spices and make it very simple. Just weekly about ten minutes. Look at the list and to see how it changed. The third step is route it to your decision forum. And what I mean with decision forum is a place and time where you can show the difference, where you can show how it match and how it provide the value to the organization and to the team. For example, if you have agent scheme team, then you probably have the retro re retrospective screen review or in the regular staff meeting on ops reviews.

And when you find a decision forum, you need to book a slot for that. For example, if you work in the team and you have stopped meeting one in a few weeks, you can ask for about five or ten minutes to showcase what you have done as well as the value that it created. So that's the three step method, and now I would like to invite you to play with it. As you as you see, if it's not measured and nothing, it didn't happen. We need to fix both. So I would like to invite you to come about one of the task right now, the outcome it enables, one possible metric to solve it, and who are the decision maker who would see it monthly? Right. Takes us a few second. Thank you, Anya. It's excellent ideas. Well, stick with us a few seconds. Circle one of the tasks that you want to keep.

Write out the outcome it enables, one metric to sew it, and keep it very simple. It doesn't need to be a very complicated metrics. And, also, think of the decision maker who succeed monthly in the organization. You can either write it down for yourself and also send a chat if you are comfortable with. And as far as already done that, just set in the chat, that you're done with it, then we can move on. Thank you, Katrina. Thank you, Vima. Alright. So now as you already circle one of the task and find out the metrics as well figure out who's our decision maker, we can move to the next step. And remember, you can do it over and over again with different tasks.

And if you do it weekly, then you have a histories, then you can view it out, and you can showcase it. Okay. Then the next question for you to think is where the inbps will work high. Right? We first talk about three step, and now I would like to expand the view on more than the step. So the question to you is where else the visible works highs. It can be glue work like coordination, mandrelings. It can be edge works or incident run books, release, or civic label like interviews. It can be customer rescue, escalations, success engineering, all kind of that things. So think about for yourself so that you have broader view on where else does the impact lies. So now we come to the visibilities ladders.

Where we will sell this number and to whom? I would like to challenge you. Just open the calendar and book a recurring ten minutes load to report some metrics for the next three months. And why doing this? Because if we don't report it for ourself, if we don't write down for ourself, we also don't know how much impact we can create it. And if we, ourselves, don't know, how we can help to sell that to others. So we start with ourself. So the challenge for you is this vocal recurring time minutes in the on agenda to identify it, audit it, and how to report the metrics for the next three months. We are almost done in our workshop, so let me know how far you go. Thank you, Sofia, for sharing. Alright.

We're coming to close to at the end of the sessions, and the last part is make credit contentious. Think of one teammate, often a woman or caregiver, doing invisible work that helps you. In the next week or two, how will you amplify the help to you? Takes us a few seconds to reflect on that. You can either say it in the chat or write it out for yourself. And why is it important? Because when we amplify their health and make their health visible, then we also help them to make their invisible work to become visible. And when they grow stronger, it's also helping you as well. So think of one teammate, often a woman or caregiver, doing invisible work that helps you. And the question is, in the next week or two, how will you amplify the help to you? Giving credits when you do.

If you are leaders and managers, what can you do tomorrow? How can you, as leader, move frictions? That's the question I leave you with if you are managers and leaders joining in today. Career growth shouldn't depended on who volunteer for the 7AM shift or who get credits for the 9AM presentation. Invisible work keeps organization alive. Starting today, it get measured, seen, and reword by you and for you. So that's it for today, and I really hope that it gave you some tools and some ideas how to make your work visible and how to be just being helpful being promoted. So have a lot of fun practice it and try it out and try it with others.

Maybe you can leave in the chat what you take away from today so that we all can learn from you as well. Thank you for staying with us and being with us today. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Gemma. And thank you, Zoeka. You're welcome, Sophie. The memory can always do that for the sale. It just take a few minutes, and you can do it with other as well, with the themes, for examples. Imagine how that might be for them. So, lady, thank you a lot for all the invisible work that you've done. Let's make it visible, and no can be a very powerful answers. Thank you for being here. And if you want, you can just connect me with me on LinkedIn, and would love to talk to you later if you would like to.

So for now, have fun, enjoy, and have a great day. Bye for now.