Bosses banning Blackberries over wasted time
by James Agate
According to research conducted by employment law experts British bosses are increasingly banning Blackberry devices and other smart-phones such as the iPhone over fears that they cost more in lost productivity than they gain.
In recent years, many businesses have rushed to dispense smart-phones to all their staff to allow them to send and receive emails even when they’re not at their desk – work around the clock was the initial hope.
Aside from the fact that this probably never was a good thing for productivity, work-life balance or even staff morale bosses are now beginning to turn their backs on the devices, for fear that the amount of time staff waste on them when they should be working far outweighs the benefits of 24 hour access to e-mails.
Many suspect that the highly addictive Angry Birds game available on the iPhone and many Android devices has something to do with the lost productivity!
Peter Mooney, of Employment Law Advisory Services, said “What started as a trickle of employers, concerned that downgrading their staff’s company mobiles might constitute a change in their remuneration package, is certainly building up to a stream as more and more employers start looking at what they really need from their employees.
Being able to email staff at seven or eight o’clock was certainly seen as a benefit, but now the phones can do more and more, they are realising that giving staff such powerful technology has its drawbacks too.”
One of the main drawbacks mentioned by many employers is the fact that the phones’ technology is becoming a distraction to staff while they are in the office.
Mr Mooney added: “With more and more free minutes and free internet access are built into the agreement, it is difficult to distinguish which calls, and which websites, are business-related and what is not
ELAS estimates that employees who use smart-phones such as Blackberries to access work emails actually only save between five and 20 minutes a day, depending on how much of their time is spent away from an office.
This is compared with losing between 30 and 90 minutes a day through staff using the phones to keep access Facebook or Twitter, checking the latest football news or playing games.
That is quite a big imbalance by any standard.
Mr Mooney said: “A lot of the employers we speak to say that staff tend to overestimate the time they save because they place too much value on responding very quickly to emails.
“In reality, when the phones are removed, they tend to find that most of those emails can wait a few hours and can then be dealt with much more effectively and efficiently at their desks.”
According to Mr Mooney, in most cases, downgrading an employee’s phone from a smart-phone to one which simply makes and receives calls and text messages, does not constitute a reduction in their overall package.
