Reflections by Kate Young.
In her 2019 talk, "Being Glue", Tanya Reilly does something very powerful. She names a thing, and she names it well. Glue work, “the less glamorous - and often less-promotable - work that needs to happen to make a team successful."
Why is it so important to have a name for this?
Because this type of essential but time-consuming work is more likely to be taken on by women. Taking on often non-promotable glue work can hold women back in our careers. In her talk, Reilly cites a Harvard Business Review study which explores systematic gender differences in how glue work is allocated within teams.
When I talk to people about my role as a software engineer at EchoBolt, I often start by telling them about our great workplace culture. We're a startup in the wind industry with a growing and diverse team. A third of EchoBolt's team are women, and that proportion rises to half within the software team.
So statistically, we're doing well compared to the wider wind industry, where just 21% of the workforce are female.
Now, as a small startup software team, there's definitely plenty of glue work to go around.
What's really interesting, though, is that we haven't fallen into the trap that Reilly and the Harvard Business Review study describe. The glue has been spread pretty evenly between everyone on the software team, regardless of gender.
What works for us:
1. Glue all the way down: Respect
As a young startup with a small team, our senior leaders have had to do an awful lot of glue work themselves. Now that we've started to grow, the memory of that glue is still very fresh. With it comes a shared respect for the amount of time glue work takes.
2. It's not just me: Acknowledgement
With this respect comes gratitude for now having others to share in this work. We have a great culture of acknowledging and celebrating people for the tasks they're doing, however big or small they may be. As a remote team, this is often via Slack, or a video call.
3. Checking in: Caring
Despite working remotely, we try to check in on each other regularly in terms of wellbeing, workload and work/life balance. We try to notice if someone is taking on more of the "glue", and aim to balance it out the next week. We're not perfect, but we care. It counts for a lot.
How do we keep it going as we grow?:
As our business grows, I don't believe we can take our culture for granted. We need to keep nurturing it. It is very powerful to have a shared term like this that can genuinely impact the progression of women.
As every software engineer knows, names matter. Glue work, when treated with respect, acknowledgement and care, doesn't have to be a sticking point for the women in your team.
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