Should you add your boss as a friend on Facebook?

It is natural for most people to shed their facades or break down personal restraints once they’re online – the world wide web’s element of anonymity allows many to suddenly proclaim their obsessions over melted cheese and turnips without fear of implications.

Despite the TMI (Too Much Information) nature of Facebook and other social networking sites, friend requesting your boss seems to come too easily for most people.

Unfortunately, according to a survey, the chances of your boss feeling squirmy over clicking the ‘Accept’ button is just under half: 48% of executives admit that they are uncomfortable with being ‘friended’ by the employees they manage.

Similarly, 47% of the employees surveyed too don’t feel entirely comfortable seeing their manager's face in a drunken nightclub snapshot beseeching for a friend request.

“In Singapore, there are already more than 500,000 people who are Facebook members. While the majority uses it for social networking, an increasing number are using it as a tool to engage in business-related activities including sales, marketing and promotion, product research and recruitment,” says Mr Tim Hird, Managing Director of Robert Half Singapore.

The term ‘social networking’ has extended its field into business and professional grounds – hence almost completely eradicating the ‘social’ half – and while this tends to create a friendly, personable relationship between colleagues and employers, there still ought to be limits.

Robert Half shares some tips on handling tricky Facebook situations:

You are tagged in an embarrassing photo. Un-tag yourself and change your privacy settings so photos are viewable only by your close friends.

You are ‘friended’ by someone you do not want to connect with. It might be best to accept friend requests from colleagues to avoid slighting them, but add them to a “work” list and adjust your privacy settings so you can effectively separate your job from your personal life.

You are considering ‘friending’ your boss. It may seem like a natural extension of amiable office small talk, but think twice before proactively ‘friending’ your boss. It could become awkward for both of you.

You want to join various groups. You should join groups that interest you. But if you have colleagues in your network and do not want them to see the groups you join, remember to adjust your application settings.

You would like to be a fan of certain pages. Becoming a fan of pages on Facebook is visible to anyone who can view your profile, so you should avoid becoming a fan of any page you are uncomfortable sharing with colleagues or business contacts in your network.

You love quizzes. Stop and think for a moment before taking online quizzes and posting the results to your Facebook page -- unless you want professional contacts to find out which “Lost” character you most resemble or personal traits that you would rather them not know.

So before you decide to befriend the intimidating CEO of your company in the feeble hopes that it would dissipate whatever office tension that might be around, think again.

“There is a fine line to draw between friendliness and being too close for comfort," Mr Hird concludes. "It is important that employees are educated on the code of conduct in social media in order to avoid misunderstandings or situations that could affect working relationships or one’s professionalism, and effectively utilise this medium in both the social and business contexts.”


HAHAHAHA damn funny videos !