The Workplace

Keep your personal life private at work

by Allison Tyra

Forty hours a week is a good chunk of anyone's time and it's easy to let the lines between work and personal lives blur. But maintaining a professional appearance is often important to your career - and no one likes having her weekend activities become water cooler gossip.

Jason Saul is co-owner of the Ocean Agency, a Midwest Web design firm. Saul's advice for keeping the "private" in "private life" is simple: "Just don't talk about it."

This applies to both verbal and electronic discussions, Saul says.

"We technically can review all of our employees' e-mail," Saul says. Though his company does not sneak a peek at electronic messages, he says most can and many do.
He recommends separation whenever possible. Do personal work on your personal-use computer, cell phone and e-mail account. This is especially true if you're doing something particularly sensitive, like searching for a new job.

Mark Franz, vice-president of Information Technologies at Fontbonne University, says anything you post online can reflect back on the company; in addition to online company directories, networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook allow users to post current and previous jobs. Also, don't use a work e-mail address to set up a personal account, such as on Myspace. Instead, Franz suggests getting a free account through Hotmail and Google's Gmail.

When it comes to sites like Facebook or Twitter, it is important to be careful whom you "friend" or "follow." And keep in mind the image you want to portray when posting updates, photos and personal information.

Here are several options if you don't want your boss to see your page:

> Set your privacy settings to exclude his/her viewing your photos, blogs, etc. and allow only basic information.

> Consider not putting certain things up in the first place.

> Simply explain that you are not comfortable communicating with them through this venue and do not connect in the first place.

Some workplaces might require use of a certain network, like Twitter, for work-related purposes. In this case, you either can sanitize your own account, or create a professional one in addition to the original. Several networking sites, including LinkedIn and Facebook, allow the user to post current and previous employment positions. As soon as your name comes up in conjunction with that employer, everything else you do online reflects that organization, from a LiveJournal blog to the YouTube video of Grandma's 80th birthday.