One of the best ways to “make your own luck” at work is to be extremely visible.

Being visible is when people know who you are, what you’ve worked on, and what you’re capable of. It’s one of the biggest ways to get more recognition, more projects, and even more fulfilment at work.

🤷‍♀️ How do I get more visible at work?

Here are my top 5 ways to increase your visibility at the workplace.

1. Be active on your work channels.

Every workplace nowadays has a “digital watercooler” or a place where everyone is active – this might be some channels on Slack or Teams, or if you’re in a big corporate, you might even have an internal social network.

Being active by posting and engaging with content on these channels is a great way to meet others and build up your reputation. You could post about the workplace, projects you’re working on, opportunities you’ve seen online, or even just support others publicly when they share what they’ve been doing.

2. Be social at work.

Spend time getting to know your coworkers! This might mean mingling at Friday drinks, eating lunch in the common area instead of at your desk, or going to events like Lunch ‘n Learns or morning teas. If you’re regularly just around, people will start to recognise you and want to have a chat.

3. Find ways to promote your work internally.

Most of the time, most of your coworkers won’t know what you’re working on. If you’re working on a project that’s really cool, it’s great to let everyone know about it and do a bit of promo! Some ways you can promote your work:

• Get a section in the Town Hall about it

• Share some progress in a public Slack/Teams channel

• Find people who might be impacted and proactively share with them

• Present at a Lunch ‘n Learn

• Put some posters up around the office

Remember, this is project promo, not self promo, so you don’t need to feel self-conscious! You can also use it as an opportunity to shout out some of your collaborators in front of the business.

4. Get your manager on board.

If you have a good relationship with your manager, it’s good to flag it with them that you want to have more visibility in the office. They’ll then be able to find you even more opportunities to meet others and present work on the behalf of the team, and they’ll also be conscious of the impact you’re having. (Great for performance review season.)

5. Support others with your unique skills.

If you have the enthusiasm to take on more work, you can usually find ways to help out other teams with your skillset to broaden your reach even faster. I used to do posters for HR teams, merch for marketing teams, and workshops for sales teams – all help you practice your skills (sometimes skills that you don’t get to exercise as often) and get you collaborating with people you wouldn’t normally get to.

👎 Are there downsides to being visible?

Depends on what you’re looking for out of your job! These are some common side effects from increasing your work visibility:

🤷‍♀️ More work, same pay.

For now, you’ll be given bigger projects (or more projects) without an increase in your salary. This is the price you have to pay for accelerating the promotion opportunity. If you can demonstrate you’re adding value in more areas for more people, you’ll get rewarded – but not immediately.

🙃 More “low value” task requests.

When you’re everyone’s favourite [insert your role here], you’ll get more requests for help on things that aren’t really worth your time. You don’t necessarily have to take on all of this, but you do need to be comfortable turning them down gracefully – or delegating them to more junior teammates.

💬 More interruptions.

Both of the above translate into more interruptions: people swinging by your desk or pinging you on Slack with a “quick question” more than they would otherwise. If you struggle a lot with context switching, you might want to try scheduling reply time to get them off your mind.

You can’t reap the benefits of visibility without some side effects, so just be aware of what you’re going into.

😫 What if I don’t want this?

If you read through all of that and thought it sounds absolutely horrible, that’s okay! You can still get recognised at work without having all the showmanship that goes into visibility. The main benefit of visibility is accelerating opportunities – so you won’t have zero opportunities if you like to fly under the radar a bit. But your growth and progression might be slower, so it’s a choice you’ll have to make.

Working on your visibility in the organisation is definitely a long-term play: you can’t just have a really big networking week and hope it pays off! But if you’re looking for a way to advance to more senior levels and really stand out from your peers, this can be one of the most effective ways to be noticed and recognised by leadership and other departments.