If your boss follows you on social media, it can either be completely harmless or a source of conflict in your professional development. In this post, we give you tips on safeguarding your online reputation, even if you are the one adding your boss on social media.
Following your boss on social networks
We live in a world dominated by digital technology and, specifically, by the enormous presence of social networks in our lives and work life.
These tools are designed with different security filters according to the level of accessibility that their users want to have in the public eye. It is essential to consider this if your boss follows you on social media or vice-versa. Social networks make our image, opinions, affinities, interests, and other aspects of our life known if we make them public through them. No wonder: that’s what they are there for.
We never know who’s watching
However, it is important to count on people’s curiosity. At some point, human resources managers at the company we work for or want to work for, our co-workers, and, of course, our superiors will be interested in tracking our presence on the internet.
It may be for simple gossip, camaraderie, or to examine our style to measure our degree of professionalism. If you follow your boss on social networks one day or tell them about your profile with a like or a comment, why shouldn’t they do the same with you?
Others may do this discreetly or even invisibly, but it can also happen that our boss starts following us on a social network or likes or posts public or private comments. Even if all this happens in perfectly acceptable, innocent, or neutral content, what is our role if our boss follows us or interacts with us at some point through our networks? How should you manage your use of networks so that it does not interfere with your work life if your boss follows you on social media or if you follow them?
Here are some tips on how to handle these situations appropriately.
7 tips if your boss follows you on social media
1. Take care of your online reputation
Whether we want it or not, our life is on the airwaves, and the more activity we have on social media, the more information we publish about what we do and think. This is shaping our online personal brand; that is, it is carving our reputation, our external image, and, unfortunately, also uncontrollable by us once it is made public. Remember this if your boss follows you on social media.
That is why, unless we are lucky enough to be in an invulnerable professional situation. It is good that we take care of the image we give on the Internet: we never know which present or future boss (colleagues or human resources managers) will have access to it.
2. Behave assertively
You don’t have to follow everyone back just because they follow you or feel obliged to return a like or comment on your private networks. You have the right to put up some barriers that mark your space between life outside and inside work. People who follow you, ask to follow you or give you likes do not have to rigidly draw that plan for you because it is yours alone.
If you want to follow your boss on social media, go ahead, but feel free not to reciprocate all the social media interactions from your co-workers or boss. Take it naturally: if you are comfortable with what you post and your networks are open, take it naturally when your boss or colleagues follow you, regardless of whether you decide to reciprocate or interact.
3. Be coherent with what you publish
If you have public networks, you expose yourself to anyone following you or looking at your content, even if you don’t realize it. Remember that if you have open networks and publish any content, you also expose yourself to damage your online reputation. As workers, we are required to be professional, which implies, among other things, not being naive, not hiding our heads under our wings, and being aware of the consequences of “publishing ourselves” on the Internet. We must be coherent.
4. Assumes responsibility
Hiding behind the argument that you have the right to your privacy or to do what you want in your “private sphere” is not always going to free you from a boss having access to something you have published on the Internet about your opinions. Your tastes or your actions and taking some kind of retaliation for it. You have your rights, of course, but if you make yourself known without filters, you must be aware that anyone can access that content.
That’s why you must be responsible and coherent and take measures:
- Set up private networks.
- Take care of what you publish.
- Do what you think is convenient or what you feel like doing and assume the consequences that this may have.
5. Don’t put yourself at risk with your company
We often define ourselves in our profiles by indicating our position in a company as a business card. This means that even if what we post has nothing to do with work, our company may consider that we speak on their behalf when we post on networks.
For that reason -even when we have not explicitly identified ourselves as members of our company– we must be careful with specific content that may be considered inappropriate by the company or even attack its values head-on: that can put us in a compromising situation with our boss. Remember that you have probably signed some kind of commitment to act as a proper brand ambassador in your private networks while working for the company.
Other times the problem lies in negative opinions you express on networks, specifically about your work or the company, thinking that your bosses won’t find out. Be careful. Don’t put yourself at risk unnecessarily.
6. Use networks efficiently
Social networks have become very sophisticated and, among the all-or-nothing privacy, allow degrees of access to the content you post. So, you can have your boss follow you on social media or the other way around. Still, you don’t have to give up everything you post just for fear of your boss seeing it or exposing yourself entirely if you don’t want to give up anything at the risk of your boss gaining access to it.
Use the different features that social networks offer you to decide with which people you share each content and who are left “in the dark” of what you publish. This does not guarantee that any compromised content can escape your control, but at least it is something.
7. Be professional
Sometimes with co-workers, even with our bosses, we have a very good relationship, and we follow each other in networks comfortably and naturally. There is nothing wrong with this since there is no complete division between our work and non-work aspects.
However, especially with bosses, try to maintain a certain distance or caution in your comments or private conversations on the networks. The next day you have to see each other in the office, and having lowered specific barriers when interacting outside of work can lead to a conflict in the relationship in the future.
Caring for emotional well-being in organizations
At ifeel, we work to help companies progress by committing to employee well-being. To achieve this, our team of psychologists, experts in well-being at work, has created an emotional well-being program for companies that brings relevant benefits to the entire team, including those responsible for Human Resources.
Do you have a role within your organization’s Human Resources department? We know these managers perform a job that significantly impacts the company’s results. That’s why, through our program, they can receive personalized, data-driven advice on improving the psychological well-being of their teams. Try our program now to see how it could help you.
This program offers all employees a complete mental health care service from which they can benefit differently depending on their needs. Those who wish can access an online therapy service with one of our psychologists, specialized in cases such as theirs, or interact with one of our professionals to receive emotional support in a more specific circumstance that concerns them.
In addition, in our Resources section, you can find different materials, such as podcasts, HR guides on various topics (e.g., employee experience or how to design a good HR strategy), or interviews with key HR leaders. In addition, we have a Psychosocial Risk Factors Template, which you can use to comply with the requirements of the Labor Inspectorate.
We hope this post about what to do if your boss follows you on social media has been helpful. If you want more information about our emotional well-being program for companies, simply request it, and we will contact your team as soon as possible.
