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player ready...The early bird may get the worm, but that’s about all.
You may have suspected, based on your own workplace observation, that the employee who comes in early every day doesn’t get recognized for the effort.
Turns out your suspicions are right, according to a report from Management Recruiters International, which bills itself as the world’s largest search and recruitment organization.
Quoting the company’s CEO: “Despite the fact that putting in the extra time–whether it be in the early hours of the morning or late at night–potentially leads to greater productivity, workplace early birds do not reap the same rewards, promotions or acknowledgements for their efforts. It’s simply true that more notice is taken of people who work late than of people who come in early.”
Does that mean that to get noticed an early bird has to discombobulate his or her work hour preferences?
Not necessarily. But the early bird may have to deliberately call attention to the extra time spent on the job. Management Recruiters suggests some easy ways to do that:
Send supervisors appropriate work-related e-mail messages during the early-morning hours. The messages will be timed and dated to provide a clear record of attendance.
Ask supervisors “innocent” questions about whether a special pass key or security code is needed to gain access to the office before others arrive.
Make casual reference to the extra hours spent on the job when giving the boss project reports.
Self-serving? Yes. But it can’t hurt to wiggle in something like, “I can’t believe how easy it was to make progress before the phones started ringing at 8 a.m.”
The disparity in recognition of early birds vs. midnight oil burners may stem from a workplace propensity for bosses to work late.
Other workplaces, of course, may have the opposite structure: Managers could be the early birds and wonder where their laggard employees are.
As with any generic observation or advice, it’s important to size up your own workplace. If your supervisors tend to stay late, but that doesn’t work for your family life to do that, you should talk to them about your willingness to commit time early in the day.
Especially for salaried workers who don’t get overtime pay, extra time spent on the job shouldn’t go unrecognized. But if the largest search firm in the world says that’s happening, consider it a word to the wise.