What a coincidence that the first day of my internship falls on my birthday! It is very hard to balance both professional and personal lives. When we do start a new job, we often ask ourselves, “Is it OK to have a close relationship with our colleagues?” or “is it OK to add them on Facebook?” One of the dilemmas of modern life is how to manage one’s connections’ and relationships’ on social media. The big question is how do we separate our professional lives from our personal lives?
Ideally, it is better to keep both areas separated but it is hard to achieve that. We all use the same brain in every situation. How will you switch off some regions of your brain depending on the surroundings? My experience is that it is all mixed up.
Professionalism is fundamental in this case. Once you start connecting with colleagues, especially on Facebook, you will want to maintain a professional presence and not forget the responsibilities you have for the company, but of course, you might still want to share those crazy party photos and, in my case, birthday celebrations.
In order to separate your work network from your friends, you will want to create friend lists. At minimum, you will want to create a list with the people you work with. You can use this list to post updates that are only to be shared with your work colleagues, but more importantly, you can use this list to post updates that are to be hidden from work colleagues. You may also want to add mutual friends of yours and your work colleagues to that list as some updates are shared to friends of friends as well.
At the end of the day, it is up to you to make the judgement of whether to mix business with pleasure. Everyone is different and have different backgrounds and work ethics. Just do what you think it’s right for you.
X Hannah
3 comments:
Hi Hannah
I think you have given some practical and realistic advice in your blog. In today's world it is so hard to keep your work and personal life separated. Social media can make it feel we are being monitored all the time. The suggestion of creating lists and being mindful of who sees what by being proactive in blocking some people from seeing certain posts, is something that people can do to help navigate the blurred lines these days. Although we do still need to be mindful of how easily something placed on the web can spread far and wide.
Regards
Lee
Hannah, you make some really interesting points and crossroads that I think we all experience. Especially in my workplace I find that consultants are really open about their personal lives on a daily basis however I do not feel comfortable to do this.
I think this will always be a grey area in professionalism as everyone has different perceptions on professional boundaries. But I really like your practical solutions when arriving at these crossroads as a first point of call.
Dennielle
Hey Hannah I can relate to you about the challenge of balancing personal and work/study life. At my placement the mega event that all my work has been leading up to is being held on the date of my 21st birthday.
I suppose this is all apart of the learning experience because life will throw us curveballs but it is our ability to handle them that will determine success
Your blog post gives me some comfort in the fact that I am not alone in this so thank you :)
Tegan
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