Effective team leaders know that it’s vital to inspire confidence from above in order to ensure continued support and resources. One of the most powerful ways they do this is by relying on solid data, targeted strategies, and proven tools—all in the name of visibility.
Why Visibility Matters: The Stats Speak Louder Than Words
When employees are publicly recognized for their hard work, they work harder. A survey by Glassdoor reveals that employees who feel appreciated are 81% more motivated. On the flip side, a 2023 Gallup poll revealed that low engagement can lead to 18% to 43% higher turnover. Gallup also points out that best-practice organizations boast 70% annual employee engagement. Put simply, visibility leads to engagement, and engagement leads to higher ROI, according to 56% of respondents to a Harvard Business Review survey.
The Real Numbers Behind the Benefits of Visibility
Visibility can be expressed in many ways, including recognition, transparency, and communication.
- Upward mobility: Employees whose achievements are acknowledged are 2.7 percent more likely to feel engaged, and being praised also means being noticed by the people who can promote or reward them.
- Fruitful partnerships: Teams that are transparent about their progress are 40% better at collaborating with other departments and encouraging innovation internally and externally.
Data-Backed Strategies for Visibility
Maintaining visibility within your own team enables you to present a united front to superiors.
- Work with leadership to create visibility policies like “town halls,” feedback mechanisms, and open-door policies. Maintaining a transparency mindset results in more trust and better morale. It also reduces absenteeism by 41%.
- Enact a formal plan to align your team via progress reports, frequent emails, and regular meetings. Tools like Teams, Slack, Trello, Workspace, and Monday.com can help with real-time updates, project tracking, and troubleshooting. In one survey, 63% of respondents said they wasted time due to poor communication.
- Speaking of meetings, try to make them in-person if possible. Although digital check-ins are useful, physical meetings—even a quick recurring stand-up—remain more efficient for discussing team members’ questions, challenges, insights, and progress. An experiment at Stanford demonstrated that 15% to 20% more ideas could be generated by live meetings.
- Translate intangible achievements into concrete visuals with reporting tools and dashboards from companies like ProofHub and Asana. Use these visual aids to constantly update your team with KPIs, milestones, and timelines. It’s believed that 75% of employees prefer visuals over text-based info.
- Showcase your team’s successes—and set a standard for more—by posting on the company intranet or other official information source. (In case you need more proof of the power of recognition, recent research confirms that employees who feel valued and heard are 4.6 times more motivated.)
We’ve gone pretty far afield with aspects of internal and external visibility, but it all comes back to this: Sharing progress, ensuring transparency, marking accomplishments, and strengthening communications are critical methods you can use to achieve a more fulfilled and productive team.
