by Debbie Todd

Created on: February 19, 2010

Facebook is a social media site – a website designed for social networking, rather than business or professional networking.

If you add co-workers as friends on Facebook, it means that you are opening up not just your personal life and comments, but those of your Facebook friends as well, potentially to all of your colleagues.

Your Facebook friends are not only able to see all of the comments that you post, but also, by accessing your Facebook Newsfeed or Wall, all comments made by your friends.  Your photos will also be available for viewing by these colleagues and so will those of some of your friends and family.

These days, when people apply for jobs, prospective employers are known to try to access the person’s Facebook profile in order to carry out some sort of suitability check.  There have been numerous cases of applicants losing out on jobs due to the content of their Facebook pages.  There have also been cases where people have lost their jobs after using Facebook while off work due to illness or after posting derogatory comments about a boss.  This is why it is important to use strict security settings for your Facebook profile – it’s a good idea to only allow access by friends and family.  At present, the privacy settings can be accessed and altered from the Account option at the top right hand side of the page on Facebook.

If you inadvertently do make Facebook friends with a colleague and wish to change that, go to your list of Friends and delete the friendship by using the cross next to their name.  You will always be asked if you are sure that you want to do this and the person you have deleted as a Friend will not be notified of the deletion.  If the colleague does comment on the fact that you appear not to be “friends” with them anymore, a quick comment about “Facebook’s always making mistakes” will usually satisfy them without the embarrassment of having to admit that you have deleted them.  Facebook applications are notorious for being “down” a lot of the time!

I would advise anybody with a Facebook account to delete co-workers as friends on their account unless it is a person that you trust implicitly not to gossip with other colleagues about you, or unless you are friends with this person outside of the workplace.

Facebook is primarily a social website and it is not really appropriate for your profile to be seen by colleagues or employers. 

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