Seeing employees excessively using their mobile phones can be incredibly frustrating and many employers often find this issue difficult to manage. The impact of mobile phones can be a real killer for productivity and culture.
When mobile phone use expectations aren’t clearly
communicated in the workplace, impacts on businesses can include:
- reduced
productivity and performance
- poor
service to customers and receiving complaints
- distracted
and disengaged team members
- safety
concerns
So, how can you get your employees off their phones?
Below are some of the key things we recommend you consider,
together with having a well-crafted policy or code of conduct that sets out
expectations and guidelines when tackling mobile phone usage.
1. Clearly communicate your expectations to employees
Make sure that you communicate the workplace rules to
employees. It’s important that any policy you develop truly fits your business,
and is well communicated to your team. It’s also a good practice to get your
employees to sign a form clearly stating that they have read and understood the
policy. Make sure the policy is easily accessible to them. Provide reminders
and make sure these are followed up. It’s also a good idea to include your
expectations in a simple code of conduct.
2. Consider restricting when mobiles can be used
You may wish to restrict the use of mobile phones to lunch
or rest breaks or to deal with an emergency that cannot wait until the end of
the day.
If you have employees in a retail or customer-facing role,
you should also tell them to turn off their phones to avoid complaints from
customers. It can be annoying if you are waiting to pay or wish to ask a
question and you see a person just staring at their phone and ignoring their
surroundings. In other environments, you made need to be clear about allowing
people to listen to music, with or without headphones in.
3. Keep the volume down and distractions to a minimum
Having mobile phones on loud or vibrate mode can be very
distracting when calls or notifications come through, so if this is a problem
in your workplace, emphasize to employees that mobile phones should be kept on
silent or “do not disturb” mode or, if practical, ask that phones are turned
off during the working day. This will also help reduce the noise from the phone
affecting other colleagues’ concentration. If people do need to take calls,
ensure speaker mode is never used.
4. Decide where phones should be stored
If phones are strictly not to be used during work hours,
there should guidelines as to whether employees are allowed to keep their phones
in their pockets or on their desks, or whether they must leave them in a secure
location, such as a staff room or a place where they store their other
belongings. When this is not clear, we often see it creating a real issue in
retail, hospitality, and service-based industries like beauty salons or dental
clinics.
5. Stepping away to make a call
If an employee needs to make a call of a personal nature,
encourage them to step out of the office or to take the call in a quiet area
to avoid disturbing colleagues. No one wants to overhear loud, sensitive
conversation echoing through the office while trying to focus on their work.
6. Turn mobiles off during meetings
If you are having a team meeting, there is nothing worse
than someone being distracted by their phone notifications, messaging, or using
their phone and not paying any attention to the topics being discussed. At the
start of the meeting, and until it is common practice, inform employees that
they need to turn off their mobiles or use flight mode during meetings to avoid
prolonging or disrupting the flow of the meeting.
7. Do not allow inappropriate or excessive use
If you do provide an employee with a mobile phone in order
to perform their duties, make it clear when issuing that it remains the
property of the company. It can be withdrawn and it must be returned when their
employment ends. If you consider that an employee is misusing their phone by
accessing inappropriate apps, or sites, or making excessive personal calls, you
can ask them to meet the costs of any non-business-related calls or excessive
data charges.
8. Enforce the policy
Having rules is a great starting point, but you also need to
make sure that you enforce them, consistently. Allowing employees to send a
quick text here and there could send out the wrong message, and despite the
policy in place, without reminders and reinforcing the message, employees may
think they can use their mobile as they wish.
Make sure you apply the policy in a fair and consistent manner to ensure employees don’t feel targeted and to avoid any negative impact on team morale. If you’re the business owner you will need to lead by example, adhere to the same rules, and not create double standards. So really think about what works for your business, a blanket approach often won’t work. Be practical and think through what’s required to most effectively support your business operations and promote the culture you want in your workplace.
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