I think we can all admit that we'd like to be noticed at work more often. Sometimes it can seem like you put in tons of hours but never quite receive the recognition you feel you deserve, and depending on where you work, that can end up hurting your career in the long-run.
This is why we're here to provide you with some tips for how to get noticed at work in a positive way. It's not always easy to get noticed at work in a positive way, but achieving this is key to moving forward in a company.
At the very least, getting noticed for all the hard work you do every day and every week can help qualify you for one-time bonuses and year-end acknowledgments.
It can also help you avoid negative attention in the office, which, while it might make company leadership pay attention to you for a short while, the end results are never good.
Being professional in the workplace may seem like a no-brainer, and it is, but you'd be surprised how working with a company for an extended period of time can lead to unprofessional behavior in very small and seemingly unimportant ways.
For example, your office might have very clear rules about what websites you're allowed to visit during work hours, most likely prohibiting entertainment sites like music streaming services and video streaming sites.
Even if it's easy to follow this rule in the beginning, it's also easy to slip over time and subvert this rule during work hours.
But if you're able to follow the employee handbook to the letter, then you have a much better chance of being recognized as a diligent and well-behaved employee.
If there's a specific workplace rule that you feel needs to be changed to improve the quality of life of all employees, that's fine, but you're not going to fix the problem by ignoring that rule completely and hoping that your manager understands why you're doing this.
If you can follow the rules, then you'll automatically be better prepared for the day that you earn a promotion and need to lead a team.
No matter who you work for, in whatever industry, you will probably get the chance to be included in workplace meetings.
While some employees find meetings to be tedious and unnecessary, the primary goal of these events is to communicate important information about the company and upcoming goals and to offer an opportunity for feedback from employees with regards to that information.
That feedback portion of every meeting is your chance to speak up and contribute. But let's look at a couple of bits of advice for those times when you want to add something to the conversation.
For one, you should only speak up to add something if your point is completely relevant to the conversation at hand. Going off on a tangent could derail the meeting or even make the other employees think that you just haven't been paying attention.
The other important tip we want to share is that you should only offer your opinion if you actually have something to say, especially if you've been thinking about the topic for a while.
In other words, don't force yourself to try and think of an intelligent point to share right on the spot. It's great to actively engage with the meeting, but saying something just for the sake of saying something won't earn you the kind of attention you really want in the workplace.
Being a solution person in the workplace, not a problem person, is an excellent way to establish your investment in the company and prove that you're willing to go the extra mile in your work.
But what do we mean when we say 'problem person' and 'solution person'? Basically, a problem person is an employee who looks for problems in any situation and then fixates on those problems.
A problem person can easily get distracted and lose motivation by only paying attention to problems, immediate ones and abstract ones as well.
But on the other hand, a solution person is someone who acknowledges current problems and anticipates future problems but is ready to find solutions for all of them. Rather than getting weighed down by issues and challenges, a solution person is always ready to do whatever it takes to overcome those challenges in creative and interesting ways.
If you want to get positive attention in your workplace, you need to be a solution person, full stop. You need to look for fixes to the problems that are inevitable in any place of work.
This even applies to solo projects you're working on. If you encounter a serious problem, don't just let your manager know, but let them know while also offering potential solutions.
So here's the thing: it's actually possible to take all of these suggestions to heart and still find that you're not getting the positive professional attention that you desire and deserve.
That's partially because company leadership can't always closely examine the work of every single employee. There just isn't enough time to do this.
But it's also because they're not mind readers. Your manager isn't going to simply assume that you're a real go-getter who wants to move up in the company.
You need to be very clear when it comes to your career ambitions and what you want to do within the company you're with right now.
During performance reviews, let your manager know that you're hoping to join management someday, or that you otherwise are looking to move to a different department that better matches your current skillset.
If your company offers a management training program, ask to participate.
Letting company leadership know that you have solid goals for yourself and for your career, then all of the other tips we've mentioned will only become more effective.
