The Sticky Floor: A Hidden Barrier To Career Advancement

sticky floor

noun

uk  /ˌstɪk.i ˈflɔːr/ us  /ˌstɪk.i ˈflɔːr/

a low position in an organisation or area of work from which it is difficult to make progress and get a better job:

• She believes that if women are to storm the boardrooms, the sticky floor is more of a problem than the glass ceiling.
• There seems to be a sticky floor effect for highly introverted people.

The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus Cambridge University Press.

We’ve known about the glass ceiling for decades now. So much so, some believe that, like the hole in the ozone layer, it is far from real. But have you heard of the sticky floor? If it gives you the impression of gunk sticking to the heel of your shoe, then good. You should get that icky sensation.

The sticky floor represents invisible barriers keeping talented women and minorities stuck in entry-level, administrative or support hell. They try to rise up, but they simply can’t climb that elusive ladder to more senior, better-paying positions. The sticky floor is just as bad, if not worse, than the glass ceiling. It traps far too many people at the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder.

The sticky floor concept emerged in workplace research when scholars recognised that career inequality doesn’t only manifest at the top of organisations. Unlike the glass ceiling, which affects those trying to break into executive suites, the sticky floor impacts talent early in their careers, successfully creating a foundation of inequality reverberating throughout their professional lives.

“According to research, men tend to have a steady upward progression compared to women, who move more slowly and then are likely to move downwards back towards their original position. In this way, women tend to stay or return to the lowest occupational roles – they become stuck to the so-called Sticky Floor,” states the Executive Coaching Consultancy. “This effect contrasts the ‘Springboard’ idea, where men continue progressing into better positions, using their entry-level roles to bound forward in their career.”

Roshana Cole, Senior Operations Manager, AWS, touched on this in her rousing talk titled Women In Tech: From The Backend To The Boardroom. Cole identified how the real challenge begins much earlier—with the “sticky floor.” Speaking during the Women in Tech Leadership keynote at the Connected Africa Summit 2025, Cole’s deeply personal and powerful address was clear. For women in technology, especially in Africa, the biggest barriers are not just at the top. They are at the very start.

“I began my journey under the floor,” literally. As the only woman in a networking team, she was assigned to label cables beneath the floorboards. “I wasn’t given the opportunity because of my skill. I was chosen because I could fit physically where others couldn’t.” An early experience emblematic of the sticky floor, the set of unspoken, systemic, and often invisible barriers that keep women at the lowest levels of leadership: unequal access to opportunity, biased expectations, and limited sponsorship.

Yet even after earning a promotion, Cole faced scepticism. “She’s just a diversity hire,” would hear. The emotional toll of constantly having to prove herself led to sacrifices, including delayed motherhood. When she later lost a child during a high-risk twin pregnancy, Cole connected the loss to the relentless pressure to show she could “have it all” without missing a step.

Research consistently shows that these groups face disproportionate challenges in moving beyond initial job placements, even when they possess comparable qualifications and performance records to their counterparts who advance more readily.

There is, in fact, a bigger problem afoot, according to the Human Development Reports. “UNDP’s gender social norms index, which uses data from the World Values Survey and covers 81 per cent of the world’s population, shows clearly that the great majority of citizens in almost every country – both men and women – do not believe women and men should enjoy equal opportunities in key areas like politics or work.”

It further underscored this, stating “About 50 per cent of men and women interviewed across 75 countries, say they think men make better political leaders than women. More than 40 per cent felt that men made better business executives. And in some countries, these attitudes seem to be deteriorating over time.”

The Mechanics Of Career Stagnation

Sticky floors are complex and a tad unhinged. It will take more than water and vinegar to clean up modern workplaces, and the mess cannot be left to those who are stuck. Access to opportunity represents the most significant barrier. Entry-level employees often find themselves excluded from high-visibility projects, cross-departmental collaborations, or leadership development programmes that serve as launching pads for career advancement.

When these opportunities are further distributed through informal networks or based on subjective criteria, existing inequalities become amplified. Being poor can also mean staying poor. Many workers cannot afford to take unpaid internships that lead to better positions, attend industry conferences, or pursue additional certifications without any employer support. This creates a cycle where the have-nots remain trapped in positions that don’t provide them with an opportunity to advance.

Organisations are also structured in rather similar ways, with their organograms inadvertently creating sticky floors through rigid departmental boundaries and narrow job classifications. Silos mean support staff find their skills undervalued and their potential for growth overlooked. All this despite developing deep institutional knowledge and possessing valuable competencies. They rarely ever transcend positions outside their immediate functional area.

Then there is unconscious bias. It is easy to presume that certain employees are content in their current roles or lack ambition. Sadly, these assumptions often correlate with gender, race, age, or other set characteristics that have little to do with actual performance or career aspirations. Typecasting reinforces sticky floors. When someone is seen as excelling in a particular role, managers may be reluctant to “lose” that person to another department or function. This protective instinct, while well-intentioned, can trap high-performing employees in positions that don’t align with their long-term career goals.

Breaking Through: Strategies For Change

Because it is so convoluted, breaking down the sludge on sticky floors requires deliberate organisational intervention at multiple levels:

• Transparent promotions fuel a starting point. When the criteria for advancement are clearly defined and consistently applied, it becomes more difficult for bias to influence decision-making. Organisations have to regularly audit promotion patterns to identify where sticky floors exist and track progress.
• Mentorship and sponsorship programmes work across every layer of an organisation, but especially if and when specifically designed to support underrepresented employees. Organisational mentorship can feel forced, yet it brings in crucial guidance. The network accessed through sponsorship also opens up opportunities through advocacy; however, it is rarely tapped into for those circling the stick floor. For them to work, these programmes have to supersede their humdrum versions and actively mentor and champion mentees and proteges for new opportunities and visibility.
• Cross-functional project assignments and job rotation programmes doth make an employee well-rounded. Famed for developing diverse skill sets, they demonstrate capabilities across different parts of the organisation. Working in cross-functional teams breaks down the silos that often create sticky floors.
• Investing in professional development represents yet another critical intervention. When organisations provide tuition reimbursement, conference attendance, and skills training equally across all levels and functions, they level the playing field for growth and advancement.

Making A Business Case For Change

Organisations that fail to address sticky floors face significant costs beyond the obvious issues of fairness and equity. High turnover rates among capable employees who see no path for advancement drain resources and rob them of institutional knowledge. Worse yet, an inability to retain and develop diverse talent limits innovation and decision-making quality.

On the flip side, companies that successfully de-gunk sticky floors often find they have access to a broader pool of internal candidates for senior positions. This, in turn, reduces recruitment costs all while improving employee engagement and retention. Organisations known for providing genuine advancement opportunities also find it easier to attract top talent at all levels.

Take Cole. Despite her obstacles, she has risen. Today, she leads a team of over 120 engineers at AWS Support Engineering in Cape Town. But her message remained anchored in the early struggle. “We talk a lot about the glass ceiling, but few talk about the sticky floor. The truth is, many women don’t even make it into the building, let alone up the stairs.”

Cole’s keynote called not just for recognition, but for action. Quoting recent data showing that only 10.9 per cent of global tech leadership roles and 11.8 per cent of African tech start-ups are held by women, Cole challenged the industry to widen the doorway, not just polish the glass ceiling. She urged tech leaders to intentionally support women at the foundational levels of their careers through sponsorship, not just mentorship, and to create environments where women do not have to sacrifice their identity, family, or well-being to advance.

The sticky floor phenomenon reminds us that workplace equality requires attention to barriers at every career stage, not just at the top. While breaking glass ceilings captures headlines and imagination, the quieter work of ensuring fair advancement opportunities for all employees may be just as important, if not more so, for creating truly equitable workplaces.

The goal is not just to help individual employees advance, but to create organisational cultures where talent can flourish regardless of its initial position on the corporate ladder. The sticky floor may be less visible and less exier than its ceiling counterpart, but its impact on individual careers and organisational effectiveness is equally profound.

Cole summarised it thus, reminding women of their own power. “You don’t have to lead like a man to lead in tech. You don’t have to be hard to belong. The floor may be sticky, but you are not stuck.”