RWL204:How To Get Promoted While Working Remotely

Hey, it's Alex Farn, remote worker life. I hope this finds you well, wherever you may be, and in today's quick tip I want to talk about the importance of documenting your work progress to maintain a sense of control and accomplishment. Now there's talk about remote work, or remote workers specifically being less visible and affects that it can have upon their career, effects that they can have potentially upon opportunities in the workplace to get promoted, or just opportunities to Get recognition for the work that remote workers do. So the reason I've decided to date talk about Documenting your work progress, to maintain a sense of control and accomplishment is to, I guess, to allay those, those types of scenarios. And I think personally, remote workers do Do contribute a lot when it comes to remote worker, at least the workers that I know, and they shouldn't necessarily have to go the extra mile to To prove their worth. But if you do find yourself in a situation where you Perhaps are not as visible as you would like to be, then hopefully some of the tips that I share with you today are going to help you to To to remedy that, but not just, not not just that, but also, I believe, that some of these tips that will help you to be, you know, become more confident in yourself and what you're doing. And it's valuable to do this to develop or some of these things that I'm about to suggest, in order for you just to simply Develop your career and make progress, because it's always important, whether you Want to get promotion or not, it's always important to to feel as though you're making progress. So, yeah, it's important from that aspect, and this all stems from, as well, my experience as a remote worker.

Speaker 1:
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When I first started out, I became, I guess, quite isolated, and that was self-inflicted, that was because I wasn't doing the right things back then. And, of course, you learn from your experiences. You, you, you develop and you, you improve, you iterate, for example, and you not only learn from experiences, but you learn from other people. I've learned from a lot of other people how to, or what to do and what not to do, in order to, sort of, can continue to progress with, with my career. And, as I said, documenting work, progress and maintaining a Sense of control, a sense of accomplishment, is one way in which I've done that. So I just want to share with you a few tips not necessarily tips, not necessarily every one of these tips I've used myself, but these are things that I've either used myself or I've learned from others in order to to maintain, maintain that progress and that sense of control and accomplishment.

Speaker 1:
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So tip number one is is using task management tools. Now, these tools might be tools that you use personally, or these might be tools that I use on a corporate basis, within the teams that you, you, work in and you I don't know. Whatever you work, you may have an option to use a task management tool or not, but even if you do use a task, so even if you Don't have a Sort of a corporate task management tool, I'd always recommend Using your own or finding your own. And that's because you can use a task management tool to document your daily tasks and you should be doing that anyway, even if it's on a piece of paper. But you know I documenting it on a task management tool is, for me, probably the optimum route to take. It can help you to, as I said, document your daily tasks, priorities and see the progress that you're making, and that can help you to maintain visibility in your work and provide a sense of control. I mean, like I said, even if you're not using a corporate tool, if you're documenting the tasks that you're doing on your own personal tool. You'll then be able to go into your conversations and meetings with your managers and tell them the progress that you're making and update them on what you're doing and what's coming next and have oversight of what's happening in the future.

Speaker 1:
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So, task management tools is number one. Number two is creating an accomplishment log. Now, this is something that I've advocated for years, and that's because keeping an accomplishment log, or a record of achievements, as I call it, to document your completed tasks and achievements and positive feedback, is something that is a great resource. Now, that's because it can help you to see what you're achieving and what you're doing, and achievements don't necessarily have to be massive things. It could be small, iterative steps that you're making, small pieces of progress that you're making that you're documenting. But you can also, as I said, log the bigger things as well as the smaller things and, as I said, it can help you with your confidence.

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But have you ever found yourself in a situation where you want to change jobs, for whatever reason whether that's because your role is being made redundant, you've lost your job that sort of job search scenario where you're probably panicking and thinking you need to put together a resume Now, having an accomplishment record or a record of achievement. If you do that as you go along, even start it today that can really help you to put together a resume of relevant information, because you can then pick and choose which of those accomplishments that you add to your resume. And, of course, when you're in a situation where you're looking for a new role, you're usually perhaps thinking of many things at once and it's not easy to then trawl your memory of what happened one, two, three, four, five years ago in order to put that on your resume. So start today. Even if you don't plan to leave your job immediately, even if you don't plan to set up your company immediately, even if you don't plan to move on to your next contract immediately, start that record now in order to put it together so that when it comes time for you to make that transition, that accomplishment record is there for you then to cherry pick the accomplishments and achievements that you want to put on your resume. So that's number two.

Speaker 1:
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Number three regular reviews. And now regular. By regular, I mean, I mean that that can. What's regular to some people is not necessarily regular to others. So, for example, for me a regular review might be six months or it might be three months. To others it might be every week. So I think you have to decide between yourself and your manager when you want to do your reviews and agree. You know a reasonable time frame in order to do that, and I think that's important because then you can understand, you can get feedback from your manager, you can reflect and talk about the progress that you're making, the accomplishments that you've recorded, identify areas for improvement and set new goals. But again, that's a good way to remain visible and, of course, that feedback that you get from your manager whether it's good or not so good is going to help you in the long run. So regular reviews is another one.

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Number four on my list is sharing your progress. So share your progress with your team and your manager, your employer, to maintain visibility and ensure your contributions are recognized and valued. So sharing could also extend to your network as well. If there are no privacy issues or no sort of issues with, obviously you need to get sort of permission from your employer if you're sharing things that are sort of sensitive from a corporate standpoint, but finding some way or means of sharing them. So that might be an internal email, that might be internal PR, it might be on a blog internal blog. Then again, it might be external. It might be via a sort of a public blog. It might be via LinkedIn, for example. You're sharing that progress that you're making in order to sort of build momentum, to build curiosity, and whatever it is that you're sharing about. That's really important to share that so that people can see what you're doing and make sure that obviously, it's being shared with the right people as well. So great way of staying visible is by sharing your progress and, of course, hopefully that you have the company that you work for has internal mechanisms to do that and is on board with doing that. But of course, in some instances, as I said before, you may need to get permission before you start to share stuff online and wherever it may be.

Speaker 1:
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So number five on my list is closely linked to sharing progress, and that is celebrating achievements, whether big or small. So even what you might perceive as a small step may be worth celebrating, because some progress is worth well, it's worth its weight in gold. Some progress is better than no progress at all. So even the small steps that you, all the things that you see as small steps could be worth celebrating, even if it's like I don't know, give yourself a square of chocolate or something, I don't know, it could be anything like that. So, but the bigger things for the bigger picture, you need to take time to celebrate your achievements, whether that's with yourself, with your immediate team, with the business as a whole.

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Again, if you have permission to celebrate certain milestones, if it's not sensitive, it's not corporate sensitive, corporately sensitive information it might be possible to celebrate those things via social media again, to show what you're doing, and that can really give you a sense of motivation, especially if your colleagues are then chiming in and giving you congratulations on whatever is that you're celebrating. So I think those are the five things I would certainly strongly suggest that you do when it comes to documenting your work, progress, to maintain a sense of control and a sense of accomplishment, especially if you're working remotely, that sense of visibility that apparently is lacking in remote work. And, of course, you know, when it comes to working alongside people who work in office and they may have that natural visibility because they get to see their peers and their managers perhaps more often that this whole idea of what I'm talking about today becomes all the more important. Well, I hope it's been helpful for you. I wish you all the best with that.

Speaker 1:
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If you have any questions, as usual, I've left my contact details in the show notes. You can usually get me or reach me via LinkedIn. If you just look below, there's a link to my LinkedIn profile just below. Do say hello and, if this episode has been useful, please consider sharing this with your network. Please consider dropping a review or a rating if it's been of help as well, and, of course, I'm always open to feedback and I'm open to suggestions of episodes on episodes to add to the remote work life podcast. So I look forward to hearing from you and I wish you all the best.