To Friend or Not to Friend - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

I was recently contacted by a former student, now a nurse manager, to discuss a situation that had upset her. This manager is a very popular with her staff and had friended most of them on Facebook. She told me that one of her nurses had called in sick on a busy weekend leaving her unit short of staff. The manager later went on this employee’s Facebook page and saw pictures posted from a Disneyworld vacation that she taken on the weekend after calling in sick. The manager felt angry and betrayed. She contacted her Human Resource Management Department who advised her to back off from saying anything to the staff member. Evidently, she had followed protocol in requesting the sick leave and had no obligation according to their union contract to provide a further explanation. This manager had learned something about the employee that she would not otherwise know had she not access to her Facebook page.

I later thought about our conversation and realized that today’s leadership challenges are different in a Facebook age. There is little guidance out there for managers about leadership boundaries in a social media era. I had recently attended a conference and was sitting next to a Perioperative nursing director who was on Facebook. She told me that she was monitoring her staff’s use of Facebook during working hours. I wondered about the wisdom of this distance survelliance of staff. They had given her access to their sites by friending her.

I thought it would be interesting to present this controversy to our young Generation Y emerging nurse leader class for their feedback. This is what they had to say about leadership challenges with social media:

1. Friending Staff on their Personal Facebook Sites is a Slippery Slope

All 16 of our emerging nurse leaders had seen problems with ‘too much information” on Facebook sites. None saw value in friending staff unless it was on a Linked In site. The issues go both ways, the emerging leaders suggested. A recent source of controversy from their viewpoint had been the Presidential election. One emerging leader noted that her manager was in support of a political candidate, and some staff objected to her level of activism from the photos that were on her site. One emerging leader said that staff do feel pressure if the leader initiates the request and they say no.

2. Cyberbullying exists in Nursing Today

The emerging nurse leaders report that bullying or horizontal violence has moved online. All 16 leaders had seen examples of nurse to nurse bullying in the online environment. They had also seen situations where staff had made disparaging remarks about their organization. Cyberbullying can be more damaging than sharing comments verbally because the audience is potentially much bigger. What is challenging for nurse leaders, they observed, is that situations can get completely out of control and the manager may be the last to know.

3. Blogging about Work Experiences has become Common

Many nurses today enjoy blogging about their professional lives. The challenge is to maintain patient confidentiality while you do it. Some organizations have explicit policies about work-related postings but many do not. The National Council of State Boards of Nursing notes in their Social_Media whitepaper that the line between free speech protected by labor law and the First amendment and employer restrictions is still being determined.

There has been little written in the nursing literature on this topic. Many health care organizations today have social media policies but they are more directed to protecting patient privacy and boundaries. All industries are confronting this issue. In a survey conducted for Liberty Mutual, 54% of Facebook users believe that it is irresponsible to friend request your boss. Another study by Russell Herder found that 26% of employees are currently friends with their managers — and 38% of younger workers said that their bosses initiated the relationship by adding them as a friend, with 29% feeling pressured to accept a friend request. The decision to friend or not friend is one that each nurse leader must make for themselves but it does pay to be very cautious if your answer to this question is yes.