Being the 'nice girl' isn't going to get you that pay rise

Why women need to stop doing 'non-promotable tasks' in the office.

Why women need to stop doing 'non-promotable tasks' in the office.

Learn to say no to crappy tasks at work or risk not getting a promotion.

That's the advice from leading academics and workforce experts.

All good things begin with sharing $10 bottles of wine with your friends at a dinner party and it certainly did with The No Club.

The No Club started when four women who, despite working harder than ever, still trailed behind their male colleagues.

And so, they vowed to say no to requests that weren’t part of their job descriptions that pulled them away from the work that mattered most to their careers. And, you know, the work they were employed to do.

The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work, reveals research that women everywhere are unfairly burdened with "non-promotable work" or "non-promotable tasks" - things which are now becoming known as "NPTs".

Examples of NPTs

• Being tasked with organising a colleagues farewell/birthday party
• Mentoring younger colleagues
• Being told to take down the minutes in a meeting  

HR and leadership expert Tammy Tansley agreed with the sentiment of the book and said young people and women can often get overloaded with NPTs.

“There’s a tension between it being a reality of the workforce when you first start out and doing that stuff will stop you from getting ahead and not doing it will get you a reputation of being difficult.

“As a young person doing as much as possible is always a good idea to gain credibility but it’s then about drawing a line and say I’ve done my fair share and now it’s someone else’s turn,” Tansley told The Oz.

“It’s all about how you balance all of that.”

Tansley said women in the past have been asked to do things where the line is super blurry. Like picking up the dry cleaning and organising the boss’s kid’s birthday party.

How to say NFW to NPTs

Tansley pointed out that “absolutely not” every single task you're asked to do at work was going to be in a job description, but it’s about saying to yourself: “Where it’s not obvious where you can get a benefit from doing it then you should say no.”

“It takes confidence to say no and until women do that, unless we are clearer on the boundaries, people will keep asking.”

“Don’t do it because you’re scared to say no because that sets up an unhealthy power dynamic.”

She also suggested that organisations need to make a judgement call on what the value and the benefit of an NFP is.

“We have to be smarter in how we view some of these things, and we say to the businesses and organisations what’s the cost of not doing the NPT doing it, what’s the cost of that in the longer term .”