As our work practices change, the boundaries between our professional and private lives become more traversable and ill-defined, especially for those of us who spend some of our time working from home. Online working, and the vast range of digital media platforms now available, means that everyone has myriad ways of connecting, and inevitably a substantial portion of online communication is unrelated to work and challenges our understanding of the concept of professional privacy.
In the days before mobile phones, office phone systems were probably abused – it was understood that employees were allowed to use the office phone line for private calls, within reason, and certainly there would be no criticism if the phone was used in an emergency. However, sitting at your desk, having a lengthy private chat on the office phone was not considered good business etiquette and many a boss had to have a word with employees who blithely made lengthy personal phone calls on their office phone. This was often a public transgression, witnessed by colleagues who were forced to eavesdrop personal phone calls in open-plan offices, which many found intrusive and embarrassing.
Nowadays, we all have our own mobile phones and have become increasingly addicted to them. We glance at them every few minutes, jump to attention when we see the screen light up or hear the beep of notifications and find ourselves easily led down the garden path of internet distraction when we pick them up to send a quick text. Since texting is unobtrusive and seemingly private, unlike the audible phone calls of days gone by, many of us feel that we have a carte blanche to use our mobiles for private texting throughout the day. But it is easy to let your phone distract you from the task in hand, and you need to ensure that you are using it sensibly and discreetly at work.
Follow these simple guidelines:
•Keep your phone out of sight (preferably in a bag or drawer). If it’s on your desk your eye will constantly be drawn to it, and you will find it hard to resist picking it up, looking at it, and fiddling with it.
•If you receive calls on your mobile that must be answered, do so away from your desk if possible. You can usually take a call in reception, in a corridor, on the stairs. But keep an eye on the clock and don’t get carried away.
•Put your phone on silent; your intrusive ringtones, beeps and alerts will not only distract you, but the people who are sitting nearby.
•Try and rein in your texting habit. If you’re constantly hunched over your phone, texting, people will assume that it is not work-related. Try and give yourself texting ‘windows’ throughout the day – for example, looking at your phone while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil in the communal kitchen, or while you’re eating your lunchtime sandwich.
•Don’t carry your phone around when you move about the office, and don’t take it into meetings. Never put it on the table in front of you at meetings, as it clearly indicates that your colleagues do not have your undivided attention and that’s just rude.
It’s not just about phones. Everyone can use their work computers to access messaging apps and social media, and – using the plethora of sites and platforms available – can maintain contact with friends throughout the working day. This can be done discreetly, and unless someone is looking over your shoulder, none of your colleagues will be aware that you are socialising, not working.
This is bound to happen, but just remember that it is a huge distraction – we’re all finding that digital media is making us jumpy and shortening our attention span. If you want to succeed professionally, it is your own responsibility to manage your time effectively and most employers will trust you to do so; fight the tendency to become distracted by allocating yourself ‘packets’ of concentrated time when you focus on the task in hand and do not let your attention stray.
As far as employers and management are concerned, they must accept that these new forms of communication are here to stay, and it would be unwise to be too draconian about their use and sensible to focus on some of their benefits. For example, instant messaging apps are a good way of communicating with employees, especially if the team is not physically together, with some members working from home.
Employees will inevitably be using social media. The important priority is to ensure that they use it well. You might well be able to use your employees’ social media fluency to build awareness of your company and brand. With good management, your employees may even become social media ambassadors for your brand.
No matter how friendly and convivial the work environment is, it is always sensible to draw clear distinctions between private and public life, and this is more crucial than ever in the social media era, when many of us chronicle our daily lives on public forums.
If you value your professional reputation, it is a good idea to review yourr privacy settings on all social media accounts. In the real world of work and career it is imperative to curate your own brand, and project a squeaky-clean image.
Of course, you will in any case need to be guarded about your personal data and online privacy. But you should also be aware that if you do not activate your privacy settings, your life will be laid bare for all to see, sometimes with detrimental consequences. It is a well-known fact that recruiters scour the social media of potential candidates, and this can set off alarm bells.
Dangerous areas are: political rants, pictures of substance abuse, provocative pictures. Also be aware that tagged photos, many of which were not posted by you, can still be seen on social media sites. If these images are really damning, you can request the tag to be removed through the site administrators. or ask the person who posted the photo to take it down.
In an online era how much privacy do you really have at work? If an employee uses his or her company’s IT systems – whether in the office or on a work-issued laptop at home – this use is likely to be monitored, because of the prevalence of cyber-threats. Privacy on work-issued computers is not recognised; your entire web-browsing history, for example, is accessible to your employer (though whether they exploit this access is another matter).
Employers can also access social media messages, chats and emails, and may do so to collect data about their workers’ effectiveness or attitudes. Remember that any office messenger service, such as Slack, can be monitored by your employer, so you should never use it for private chats. Indiscreet or inflammatory remarks about colleagues or criticisms of management policy might well come back to bite you.
Clearly this level of access can be corrosive, undermining employee trust, and therefore employers must tell employees if they’re being monitored, and why. It is within an employer’s rights to insist that equipment should not be used for personal matters within working hours, but in most cases, employers will feel they are fighting a losing battle to hold back the tidal wave of online communication.
In most businesses trust and flexibility will go a long way, ensuring that staff feel valued rather than disrespected. It is up to us all, as responsible adults, to draw lines between public and private concerns and to control our online compulsions, ensuring that we are able to compartmentalise our concentration, focus and prioritise.
