Do you struggle to achieve visibility at work?
Do you fear your effort and accomplishments aren’t getting the recognition you deserve?
Or, you’re a manager looking for ways to better support your team in increasing their employee visibility?
Read on to discover our best tips for increasing employee visibility at work.
What is visibility in the workplace?
Visibility in the workplace means getting the right recognition for your effort and accomplishments while being included in all relevant company conversations and decisions.
In a remote work environment, employee visibility often gets more challenging.
Why is visibility at work a challenge when working from home?
Without the proper support, remote employees may start to experience some of the following challenges:
- Fewer opportunities for getting noticed and acknowledged by your managers,
- Remote communication challenges,
- Limited access to resources, information, and infrastructure, and
- Reduced opportunities for connection with other team members.
How to increase your visibility as a remote worker?
Whether you’re a remote or on-site employee, it may get challenging to start actively working on improving your visibility at work without feeling like you’re being self-congratulating and braggy.
The next part of this article will help you strike the right balance through actionable tips on how best to increase your visibility at work.
Keep your camera on during meetings
People that attend meetings with their cameras on have a better chance of raising their profile at work — according to a 2019 research titled Get Noticed and Die Trying: Signals, Sacrifice, and the Production of Face Time in Distributed Work.
Try to keep your camera on during meetings for more visibility and recognition and to help people connect the face to the name.
Show your face more often
If you’re working remotely, try to drop by the office occasionally, if possible.
If your team uses a business messaging app, like Pumble, change the generic avatar illustration with your actual profile photo to help your teammates and superiors remember your face.
Take part in conversations
Contributing to the relevant team and company conversations is another important factor that can help increase your visibility at work.
Consider taking a strategic approach to ensure your contributions to important conversations get the right kind of attention:
- Get the information you need. Go over the meeting agenda to prepare for the discussion.
- Listen as much as you contribute.
- Apply the rules of assertive communication.
- Don’t hesitate to initiate conversations and ask well-thought-out questions.
Align your work schedule with your teammates’
To make sure you’re up to date on all major conversations and get immediate feedback, try to engage in real-time communication and collaboration as much as possible.
Consider syncing your hours with your teammates and managers to ensure everyone is up to date on vital tasks and projects.
Sign up for high-value projects
To get noticed by decision-makers and increase your visibility at work, be sure to volunteer for high-value and high-visibility projects.
For example, you can sign up to participate in cross-department projects or help a teammate out when they need assistance.
Set healthy boundaries
Unless you make the right balance, going above and beyond at work can backfire and lead to burnout and quiet quitting.
To prevent these scenarios, consider applying some of the following steps to keep your work-life balance and increase visibility:
- Ask to regularly speak with your manager.
- Make time for quality rest.
- Set your status and mute notifications to eliminate distractions and communicate your availability.
- Take care of your mental and physical health.
- Create meaning and purpose at work.
Share regular updates
Sharing your updates regularly is another great way to increase your visibility at work.
You can, for example, post a quick update in a dedicated channel in Pumble to have everyone involved notified.
To showcase your knowledge and commitment to learning, you can also share:
- Interesting stats,
- Useful findings, or
- Relevant reads.
Build a strong working relationship with your manager
Your manager can provide valuable support when you’re working on increasing your visibility at work.
Here are some things you can do to build a better working relationship with your manager:
- Initiate one-on-one meetings to discuss opportunities for improving your visibility.
- Show initiative to take on new and more challenging projects.
- Ask for ideas and opportunities to add more value.
- Ask for regular feedback.
Demonstrate your commitment to learning
Here are some steps you can take to improve your visibility at work through learning and investing time in your professional development:
- Attend in-house seminars, training, or coaching sessions.
- Ask to participate in relevant professional development programs and networking events.
- Share ideas on how your newly acquired skills and knowledge can be applied to benefit your team’s performance.
- Ask to participate in projects and tasks that reflect these new skills.
Spotlight the achievements of others
When working to raise your profile at work, it’s important not to forget to spotlight other people’s achievements and share credit.
Here are some examples of how you can spotlight your teammates’ efforts:
- Mention them in a relevant channel in your company team chat,
- Give them a shoutout at a team meeting, or
- Send an email to your manager and relevant stakeholders.
Get involved in company events
Your off-work engagement also improves your visibility at work.
Let your non-work personality shine and get involved in extracurricular activities such as:
- Company parties and themed events
- Regional corporate challenges
- Fundraising events
- Industry conferences
Contribute to virtual water-cooler conversations
Informal chats in your company team chat can improve team collaboration and communication and help you stay in touch with your coworkers.
Consider contributing regularly to informal channels in your team messaging app and increase your visibility at work. You can:
- Share your picks for best reads,
- Post funny videos of your dog, or
- Recommend great local restaurants for colleagues visiting your area.
How leaders can promote employee visibility
Now that we’ve seen how employees can work on improving their visibility, let’s take a closer look at how leaders can create better opportunities for employee visibility.
Provide support from day one
One of our regular expert contributors, Bill Catlette, a Partner at Contented Cow Partners, suggests a three-step process companies can implement to ensure new employees are getting the proper support from their first year:
“1. Invest considerable time and resources in the introductory period to put the new worker, their unit leader, and some of their coworkers into the same physical space.
2. Following the introductory period, the team leader and a few of the new team member’s coworkers should pay particular attention to check in with them on a regular basis to support them and further build the relationship.
3. At quarterly intervals during the first year of employment, an HR professional should further touch base with the new staffer to verify that things are proceeding satisfactorily and to gain feedback on the inculcation process.”
Foster an environment of open communication
Instead of taking the passive-aggressive route of quiet firing, take a more constructive approach if you notice a drop in employee engagement.
- Create a safe space for transparent communication.
- Instruct managers to initiate open conversations.
- Help employees revisit their motivation and purpose.
- Help employees connect to company values.
Offer M.O.R.E. to employees
Lecturer of Marketing at Wall College of Business Administration, Matthew Gilbert, shared his advice on how to help increase employee visibility and prevent quiet quitting:
“A successful manager must reach out to employees individually and offer them M.O.R.E:
- Meaning: Employees must be informed about the reasons behind decisions.
- Opportunity: Access to advancement is paramount to motivating employees, especially during exceptionally challenging times or projects.
- Respect: Demonstrating appreciation for an employee’s ideas and actions is one of the best, most easily accomplished ways to build their trust and fuel motivation.
- Empowerment: Authorizing employees to make decisions (that managers will respect) is a key component to facilitating their motivation.”
Ensure equal access to all resources
To better support employee visibility for remote and hybrid teams, leaders can make sure all employees are allowed equal access to company information, conversations, and resources.
To ensure streamlined internal and external communication and information sharing, teams can use multifunctional remote-friendly communication and collaboration tools like Pumble.
Encourage face time during meetings
To help employees see and be seen, consider encouraging everyone to keep their cameras on during virtual meetings.
In addition to improving employee visibility, this practice also has a positive impact on building a sense of community and closeness among team members.
Promote asynchronous collaboration
Remote and hybrid teams can find great use in asynchronous collaboration when looking to provide equal visibility opportunities for all team members across different time zones.
For example, organizations can ensure everything is documented and accessible to all team members in a shared channel in a team messaging app.
Additionally, companies can ensure that every relevant team member gets a chance to weigh in asynchronously before any important decisions are made.
Give credit where credit is due
To help employees get more visibility and recognition, managers and leaders can ensure proper credit is given publicly.
For example, you can mention the employee who closed an important deal in a channel dedicated to sales. Or, give credit to an entire team in the #general channel.
Monitor and respond to conversations and questions in the team chat
To help your team feel noticed and acknowledged, make time and effort to engage in team conversations.
Regularly check your team’s team chat channel and respond to questions, help resolve issues, or react with an emoji to acknowledge you’ve read the message.
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Further reading
This is just a summary of an article previously published on the Pumble blog.
To learn more about increasing visibility at work as a remote worker, we recommend reading the full article: