Mobile phones have taken over our personal lives, and they’re about to take over our professional lives as well. Information technology research and advisory firm Gartner estimates that half of the world’s corporations will require employees to purchase and use their own mobile devices for work purposes by 2017. With employees constantly connected, productivity should be on the rise around the globe, at least in theory. However, connectivity isn’t always the best thing from a business standpoint. Just as mobile phones can make business easier, they can also make life a lot more complicated.
How Phones Help
It’s obvious that cell phones can aid business productivity. From checking email to staying in constant touch with colleagues, people can truly be involved with their work around the clock. But mobile phones go much deeper than that. The new cell phones from BlackBerry are designed for office professionals and business people on the go. The new BlackBerry OS offers mobile conferencing, PDF scanners and Cisco WebEx meeting app. It's practically a virtual office in your pocket. They can help a business develop a truly global presence. Smartphones can also facilitate enhanced employee training through educational videos and learning-based applications. Additionally, mobile phones can help to eliminate the barriers of typical corporate life, because they place all people on a level playing field.
How Phones Hurt
The benefits of constant connectivity and innovative communication methods are clear, but mobile phones also create problems. The most immediate drawback is that phones are generally only to be used when employees are off site. What that means is, if you’re a company looking to implement smartphone usage, you may be paying lot of money for a device that will only be used in limited doses. The flip side to that is, if employees have access to their phones during their normal shift at the office, they may use those phones to play games or text with friends. Managing proper use is yet another challenge you will have to face.
The bigger issue, though, may be the slow creep of business life into the personal lives of your employees. Everyone needs a break, but the pervasiveness of smartphones makes this impossible. According to Forbes, the average employee who remotes in through their own mobile device works an extra 57 minutes per work day. On the surface, this is a great thing. But it can also result in people who feel as though they can never get away from work, which will ultimately result in employees feeling burnt out and having unhappy family lives, all of which will eventually hurt your company.
Finding a Happy Medium
Say you want to have it both ways. You want your employees to have lives, but you’d still like to be able to reach them when necessary. You’d also like them to have access to their work files whenever they’d like. How do you accomplish this without going overboard?
The answer is to empower employees and give them the choice. The New York Times states that nearly half of all employees buy their own work phones, which enables them to be more comfortable with their devices, and therefore more productive. The key is to keep employees engaged and allow them to take ownership of their phones and, by extension, their work. Here are some other tips for incorporating mobile phones into the workplace:
- Give your employees the option to use their phones for work purposes. Offer to share the cost of the phone plan as compensation. This means employees benefit from both a cost and productivity standpoint.
- Require those employees who use their phones for work to use the highest security setting possible. Passwords are a must. Use secure containers to separate work life from personal life. Alert them of security precautions to take when they use a work phone to do sensitive personal tasks.
- Institute an enforceable smartphone policy within your workplace. You know you can’t stop every instance of employees checking their phones, but people must know where the line is. If you’re paying for part of an employee’s phone, that phone shouldn’t be used recreationally during work hours.
- Don’t give employees jobs to do after hours. The idea is to reward their initiative, not to make them slaves to their jobs.