Each project arrives with its purpose, milestones and first tasks written out. Here is how the first three read.
Career position audit against your peer cohort
Underrepresented professionals are often promoted later and paid less than peers who joined at the same time, but the gap stays invisible until someone writes it down. Comparing your level, tenure in level, scope and pay band with three to five people who started alongside you turns a vague sense of being behind into numbers you can act on or rule out.
First tasks
- List five colleagues who joined at your level within a year of you
- Look up their current titles on the org chart or professional profiles
- Build a table of level, years in level and scope for you and each peer
- Write a one-line conclusion about where you stand
Identity disclosure decisions at work
Whether to mention a disability, a sexuality, a faith practice, a health condition or a working-class background at work is a personal decision with career consequences either way. Deciding it once, deliberately, for each audience (manager, team, HR, clients) is calmer than deciding it under pressure in a meeting or an interview.
First tasks
- List the parts of your identity you are deciding whether to share at work
- Note who currently knows each one, and how they found out
- Write the benefit and the risk of sharing with each audience
- Draft two sentences you would use for anything you decide to share
Reading your employer's representation data
Many larger employers publish pay gap reports, diversity reports or representation figures by level, and these show where people like you stop progressing. Ten minutes with the numbers often reveals the real bottleneck, for example plenty of representation at junior levels and almost none above manager, which tells you where your own risk lies.
First tasks
- Search your employer's website and intranet for diversity or pay gap reports
- Write down representation for your group at your level and two levels up
- Mark the level where the numbers drop most sharply
- Check for an updated report and refresh the note @recurring(yearly)
