An employee of a company recently posted comments regarding Pokmon Go on Facebook. The employee's comments led to Facebook users finding out the name of the company, slamming the company and leaving messages regarding its employment practices and threatening boycotts of the company. Subsequently, the employee was fired.
While smartphones have many uses, including Pokmon Go, you should ensure doing so is in accordance with your organization's policies and procedures and ensure doing so does not negatively impact your productivity.
Are Smartphones causing a lack of productivity in the Workplace?
Just recently, a national survey was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder. The survey included responses from hiring managers, human resource professionals, and U.S. workers in the private sector across industries and company sizes.
The survey did not specifically address Pokmon Go. However, it did ask participants about the biggest productivity killers in the workplace. According to survey results, cell phones/texting was the number one cause, followed by the internet as a close second.
Here are the results of the survey:
- Cell phone/texting: 55 percent
- The Internet: 41 percent
- Gossip: 39 percent
- Social media: 37 percent
- Co-workers dropping by: 27 percent
- Smoke breaks or snack breaks: 27 percent
- Email: 26 percent
- Meetings: 24 percent
- Noisy co-workers: 20 percent
- Sitting in a cubicle: 9 percent
It's important to note that the majority of workers with smartphones (65 percent) do not have their work emails on their smartphones.
Of those who access their smartphone during work for non-work use, they spend their time on these non-work related sites during work:
- Personal messaging: 65 percent
- Weather: 51 percent
- News: 44 percent
- Games: 24 percent
- Shopping: 24 percent
- Traffic: 12 percent
- Gossip: 7 percent
- Sales: 6 percent
- Adult: 4 percent
- Dating: 3 percent
Because smartphones in the workplace are common 8 in 10 workers have smartphones and 8 in 10 workers have their smartphones in close contact while at work, having a policy and procedures in place that identify permitted smartphone usage, is critical to ensure smartphones are not causing a lack of productivity in your workplace.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact one of our professional consultants.