Your Employer v/s Your Customer

This blog is result of an interesting conversation with my colleagues today.
Topic : Why doesn't my manager give me proper rating in appraisals? Even though I work hard and get client/ customer appreciation.

Probable Reasons:
- You do not have a healthy working relationship with your reporting manager. Make sure you build that from day one. If you have not done it till now then start now. It is never too late.

- One often feels that his/her manager always asks for information. We feel that the manager doesn't understand anything about the work being done but still he/she always wants to know everything just coz he/she wants to pass it to senior management. Well, yes that is part of their job. They need to report the status to the senior management. Nothing wrong with it. In fact, we should always have a weekly status report shared with our reporting manager,  it will help to avoid untimely follow-ups and ad-hoc questions. Providing weekly status to your manager will you a lot of visibility as well.

- Clearly understand the difference b/w your employer and your customer. It often happens that we tend to maintain very good relationship with our client/ customer and in the process tend to forget that we work for a certain employer. We get paid by our employer and it is just a matter of time that our employer will move us from one customer project to another and/ or one client location to another. So while maintaining good customer relation is a must, we should not forget that maintaining a good relationship with the employer is even far more important for our career growth.

Where there's a will there's a way

"Filmein sirf teen cheezon ki wajah se chalti hain... Entertainment, Entertainment, Entertainment" (Three factors that make a movie successful are Entertainment, Entertainment, Entertainment). Likewise, Salary/ Increment/ Promotion bhi sirf teen cheezon sey hota hai ... "Visibility, Visibility, Visibility"(three factors that are key for ones's salary increment are : Visibility, Visibility, Visibility).

Yes, visibility is the key differentiating factor impacting your salary/ increment/ promotion.

Let us understand this with an example:  We often come across people who are hard working, committed and sincere. People who go out of their way to make sure that the job is well done and that the job/ project/ assignment is successful, yet, at the end of the appraisal cycle these are the folks who complain that they didn't receive their due and the salary increment is mediocre. 

 If they worked hard then what went wrong? They have no clue. WhaT theY Dont ReAlize is the fact that they failed to highlight their hard-work, sincere efforts to the right people in the right manner at the right time. In a nutshell, they didn't get any visibility.

Infact, they were so busy with the project delivery that they never got time to fill the self appraisal with accurate details.  Really?
Also, they always cribbed of slogging at work but they never got time to update their Resume.  Really? (this is applicable to those who think that their manager is not capable to appraise them)

So, next time you see someone (or yourself) cribbing about salary/ increment/ promotion. Ask them when was the last time they spent at-least 4 hours working on their self appraisals? or When was the last time they updated their resume and circulated in the market? just to check their own market value (forget about job change). 
Coz we all know "Where There is a Will there is a Way Pay"