Increasing your visibility at work
Increasing your visibility at work
5 minutes
Hard work on its own is not always enough to advance professionally. Just as customers can’t choose a brand they’ve never seen, leaders can’t recognise or invest in work they don’t know about. Visibility is what allows your effort to be noticed, valued and considered for opportunities like promotion, stretch roles or pay increases.
Visibility is what turns what you do into something that can be recognised.
Being visible at work is not about self-promotion. It is about making your contribution clear so the right people understand the value you bring.
Many capable people do great work that quietly disappears. Not because it lacks impact, but because no one else can see it. Visibility bridges that gap. It helps others connect your effort to outcomes. It makes your thinking, progress and results easier to recognise.
When your work is visible:
- People understand what you bring to the team.
- You are more likely to be trusted with meaningful work.
- Opportunities find you, instead of you having to chase them.
- Your effort feels recognised and energising, not invisible.
Visibility done well is not about “look at me”. It is about “here is what we are learning” or “here is what is helping us move forward”.
Career progression is shaped not only by how well you perform, but by whether your contribution is visible within your organisation. A large longitudinal study by organisational psychologists Scott Seibert, Maria Kraimer and Michael Crant in What do proactive people do? , showed people who took proactive steps to manage their careers – such as developing skills, consulting with senior colleagues, and making their work and learning visible – were more likely to experience salary growth, promotions and higher career satisfaction. The study shows that advancement is not just about what you do, but about how actively you surface and position the value you create.
Visibility creates context. It helps others connect your actions to outcomes. Without that link, even strong work can be underestimated.
You do not need to change who you are. You just need a simple way to make your contribution easier to see.
Use our Visibility in action strategies to choose one small, natural way to make your work visible.
