Lately, people have been asking me what I think about friending your boss and/or co-workers on Facebook. Personally, I do not have a problem with friending [almost] anybody on any social media platform. Sure, I like some privacy where appropriate, but I still have control over what I post and do not post online, so [knowing] that makes it easy for me to not get all worried about it. Ultimately, you have to determine your own comfort level and reasons behind approving any friend request and also deciding what best to post online. But, you still should not overly concern yourself too much with these issues, and I’m going to tell you why.
Go Ahead and Friend Them
In some cases, you will find that your boss or some acquaintance has requested to be your friend on Facebook. Do not be alarmed; it is okay to accept the request. I’d just advise you to use the tools that Facebook provides you to control your communications on Facebook! In some cases, if you do not accept your boss’ friend request, he or she might take offense to it, so why not just accept the friend request and save the trouble. Again, just use the tools, and the best way to start is with understanding Friend Lists!
Optimize Through Friend Lists
One of the best ways of organizing friends is by adding them to lists on Facebook. This is good for when you want to only look at recent posts by one particular group of people (i.e. friends in Atlanta, friends who are into fitness, co-workers, high school friends, etc.). In the case of a boss, you would add a list for employer or co-workers or even for those who should have limited visibility of your posts. Once you do that, you can then have a lot of options. You can go to your default privacy settings and simply restrict who sees all of your posts by default. Also, you can go to your photo albums and posts and restrict access to each on an individual basis so that they are hidden to those who you don’t want to be able to see [them].
I’ve done this on one photo album that I dedicate to my fitness progress. Since, I know that not everybody wants to see photo updates of me posing in order to show my bodybuilding progress, I have a list of people who support my healthy lifestyle and who want to see my progress, and I restricted access to that particular photo album to only those people I have on that list.
You can restrict or block on a name by name basis, but I always find the lists as a way to better organize everything. What if you want to change things around later and allow two people to see your posts that you restricted before and want to restrict two new people? A list makes it extra convenient to be able to do just that!
So… It’s Not All That Bad!
As you can see, Facebook provides you with the tools that you need to control what you see and what content of yours others see. If you are worried that you are being placed in a corner by your boss’ friend request (or in any other similar situation), following my tips above can help you please all parties while maintain confidence and control over the conversation! So, what do you do when your boss and co-workers friend request you on Facebook? And… is your level of concern any different than when they follow or friend request on other social media networks?
