Working from home reduces your company’s visibility. Here are nine techniques to improve your chances of getting a promotion or raise.

‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ as the old saying goes. Working from home means less exposure, making getting a promotion or raise more difficult.

Researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Business discovered that persons who work from home are 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts in a 2015 study done in China.

According to the research, there are two explanations behind this:

• First, people in the workplace did not acquire interpersonal or management skills.
• They could not exhibit such abilities since they were not given a chance.

Unconscious prejudice causes individuals to overlook their faraway coworkers. When supervisors see you working, it’s a visible confirmation that you’re dedicated to your profession, regardless of how excellent you are at it.

Employees who were watched by others at work had better results, according to a 2019 study, “because it is a powerful indicator of their devotion to their job, their team, and their company.” Even poor or average performers fall within this category.

When you work from home, your employer only sees the final result and not the time it took to get there. Even if the outcome is excellent, your supervisor may be unaware of your efforts. As a result, remote employees often overcompensate to demonstrate their dedication.

Widespread WFH helped to level the playing field during the epidemic, but most workplaces would adopt a hybrid strategy. While being personable and bragging about your accomplishments are always vital qualities, no one has a clear advantage in terms of visibility in remote teams; thus, being promoted comes down to your skills and knowledge. On the other hand, some industries opt for a wholly remote workforce, altering the unwritten promotion norms.

In this article, you’ll learn how to stand out from the crowd when working remotely, tell your boss about your accomplishments, and successfully negotiate a raise or promotion in these new times. 

Working Relationships with Your Employer

Here’s what you need to do to improve your working relationship with your employer.

1. Make It Easier for Your Boss

The most guaranteed promotion approach is making your boss’s job so simple that they can’t fathom doing the same amount of work without you. You’re there to help your boss succeed—while also ensuring your growth, of course.

Steps to Take

Learn what your supervisor expects of you and how to meet those expectations. Then, Continue’ paradigm to further understand how to fine-tune your activities for your boss’s best interests. ‘Start, Stop, Continue’ is a series of suggestions from the person assessing your work about what you’re doing well (Continue), where you’re underperforming (Stop), and what future objectives you should pursue (Start).

When difficulties arise, provide solutions and limit your criticisms. For example, if you’re a UX designer, the product team constantly changes project timeframes, causing havoc with your productivity. Request a more specific timeframe from the product manager, and you may discuss how you’ve dealt with it.

2. Emphasize Trust-Building

When you’re working remotely, there’s no such thing as overcommunication. However, because your supervisor is just human, they may have an unconscious prejudice that you aren’t working hard if they don’t see or hear from you in a while.

Steps to Take

Provide status updates to your supervisor, even if they’re little, to reassure them that initiatives are on track. An excellent example of this is sending a fast IM to your employer to let them know you had a successful conversation with a customer. As an alternative, tell your supervisor that you need some time to wait for another team member to complete the design mockup before continuing with your tasks. 

3. Discuss Career Growth with Your Boss

If you work for a significant organization, chances are your company offers formal promoting options that are reliant upon tenure or meeting specified KPIs, like user acquisition or revenue. 

Steps to Take

Promotions are given out on a case-by-case basis in smaller businesses or when a senior employee is needed. In these cases, it’s even more critical that you inquire about your company’s promotion process with your boss. Find out the criteria and start talking to your boss about how you’ll meet them as soon as possible.

To be recognized for the promotion, request a set of clear expectations and the opportunity to assess your performance in six months. If you don’t have a formal framework in place, you’ll have to collect information on your own and establish a deadline for when the final negotiations will take place.

4. Request Your Wants

Signaling your interest is often the most excellent approach to getting a promotion. Promotions come to self-starters involved in the organization and have a strong desire to advance in their present capacity; not everyone wants to progress forward.

Steps to Take

Remind your boss of your ambitions regularly in a sensitive manner; don’t let them overlook that you want to advance.

Professional and Personal Growth

Here’s what you can do for your professional and personal growth.

5. Learn New Skills and Demand More Responsibilities

‘Start, Stop, Continue’ is also an excellent place to start looking at what extra tasks you can take on to help your boss or team.

Steps to Take

Before approaching your manager about it, make a list of skills you’d want to improve or places where you’d like to get more experience. You risk embarking on tasks that aren’t aligned with your aims if you don’t reflect.

Once you’ve prepared a list, decide if you possess the required skills or whether you would need to undertake a course, attend a conference or read a book. It doesn’t matter if you enroll in a fast Python programming course or make a list of your credentials for your supervisor to check; proving your qualifications is the best approach to get a new project approved.

6. Keep a Record of Your Accomplishment

Do not go unappreciated for your achievements. Instead, make a list of your accomplishments—things you’ll boast about at your following job interview or bring up during a raise or promotion negotiation.

Steps to Take

Start a Friday afternoon practice of jotting down three or four things you’ve completed over the week if you work a fast-paced job. Even if you’re embarking on a long-term project that’s taking a long time to get off the ground, writing down modest accomplishments can help you piece together a story about how you contributed to the final result afterward.

If you’re having challenges coming up with ideas, go back over some of your previous work, review your job description to see how you contribute to the team or ask a friendly colleague what they think about your efforts.

7. Explore Professional Development Outside of Work

Whether you’re looking to enhance your present abilities or learn new ones in preparation for a promotion, there’s a course for you. Employees most wished to increase their negotiating and influencing (46%), having tough conversations (24%), design thinking (24%), and leading and managing change (21%) skills, based on the 2019 data from the Statista Research Department.

Steps to Take

You can constantly profit from taking a course, gaining a certification, keeping up on industry trends, or training yourself to utilize a new software solution, programming language, or design framework. Also, consider improving your soft skills, not only technical ones. 

Let’s imagine you’re a top-notch data scientist who is often assigned to complex projects, but your presenting abilities aren’t up to par. Taking a public speaking course or learning how to create more engaging PowerPoint presentations might lead to new opportunities.

Your Coworker Relationships 

Here are the ideas you need to do in your coworker relationships.

8. Find an Internal Mentor

Mentorship has the benefit of assisting you in identifying your blind spots. So even if you’ve made steady progress in your career or are contemplating a shift, a senior industry expert can help you understand what’s holding you back.

Steps to Take

If your workplace doesn’t have a formal mentoring program, see if you can take someone you respect out to lunch once a week for a few weeks in return for their advice. Enlisting a mentor from inside your organization implies that this individual can vouch for you and provide company-specific advice.

9. Boost Your Visibility

Remote employees and less extroverted employees confront a similar dilemma: promotions are based on visibility at the end of the day.

Steps to Take

Try to be there when you can. Attend at least one office visit every week if you reside near the company’s headquarters. Ask if you can participate in the annual general meeting if you live outside of the state. If not, volunteer to participate in brainstorming sessions. Out-of-state personnel attending an AGM are usually reimbursed for travel and airfare.