Unseen work keeps the company running. But it doesn’t lead to career progression
In every organisation, there is work that is visible and work that makes everything else possible. The former features in objectives, plans, reports and assessments. The latter operates beneath the surface: coordinating people who don’t speak to one another, turning friction into productivity, ensuring information flows, helping another team overcome a deadlock, catching an error before it reaches the customer, and transforming tension into a constructive conversation. It is often a crucial role. But precisely because it prevents problems, it is rarely recognised.
There is a form of value that only becomes apparent when it is lacking. No one measures how many meetings have been avoided by a phone call made at just the right moment. Or the value of information shared before it became urgent. No one gives credit to those who hold together parts of the organisation that belong to different silos. If everything runs smoothly, that work goes unnoticed. If it isn’t done, delays, conflicts, duplication, escalations, disappointed customers and decisions taken too late ensue.
Many companies call for collaboration, integration and speed, but continue to reward individual, visible results above all else. Fair enough. But if we look only at what each person achieves within their own sphere of influence, we lose sight of what prevents those spheres from becoming walls.
Invisible work is an organisational infrastructure. It is not the same as kindness. It is not a general willingness to help. It is the day-to-day work that increases the likelihood that the system will function as a system. It is the ceaseless activity that runs through the organisation to connect, clarify, translate, anticipate and restore. A sort of silent tax borne by those who are the most competent, the most responsible or the most attentive to the collective functioning of the organisation.
This gives rise to a paradox. People who do this sort of work are often regarded as invaluable, but they do not necessarily ‘climb the career ladder’. They are the ones who ‘keep things moving’, whom everyone turns to when a situation needs unblocking, who understand where the flow gets stuck. However, in performance appraisal systems, that contribution is not always captured by a specific metric. It does not always have a name that comes up in career discussions. Thus, the organisation ends up consuming the very thing that enables it to function.
