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Smart Phones – Blurring the Distinction Between Work and Home
I was reading an article about smart phones and I had a few thoughts perhaps worthy of comment. The first is that consumers want smart phones. People want to be seen using the coolest gadget to update Facebook, check email, and tweet the details of your dinner. The second thought that came to mind was ‘is this making us more efficient, or just more available, and what is the impact of all that real time availability’?
There was a time, not so long ago, that we had to consolidate our thoughts and questions, organize them, and present them over a phone in a conference call, or face to face in a weekly meeting. ‘Oh the humanity, Oh the hard work’ people think. How did we ever crawl out from the primordial slime without our smart phones to keep us in touch with everything and everyone! Well, I for one wonder if we are always better off. There is a certain scattered pattern to communications today, as each thread of thought is tossed out to the world to be digested and replied to. The simple art of organizing ones thoughts and creating some cohesion is getting lost. Then there is the simple concept that your mind blowing revelation may not really need to interrupt me in real time. It is hard to find a half hour of truly uninterrupted work time these days without changing gears a dozen times to answer all sorts of emails, texts, etc.
So, am I against these ubiquitous devices? No, of course not. I do, however, think that we need to learn how to live with these devices in a smarter way. Clearly as an employer, you should buy one for every employee. It has been shown time and again that people will embrace being online all the time when it comes to having these smart devices! Email is no longer a chore, but something you do in line at the movies, during dinner, and at all sorts of other little pauses in life. It’s like getting 20% more time from your employees!
Maybe…
Smart phones are electronic crack to be sure. You just can’t say no to those little buggers. You bring them to the bathroom with you, you look at them while eating, and they even go on vacation with you. We are addicted to information. We crave it. We crave the sense of connectedness to the world that we get surfing the web while simultaneously checking email, tweeting, and letting our face book friends know that we just saw the greatest movie ever… For all the home time that we seem to spend on work with these devices, we also see more personal time spent at work. On the whole, I don’t know if they add to productivity or detract from it, but they do integrate work and home life more deeply than ever before, and perhaps, given time, the right functionality will continue to push the needle towards productivity enhancement.
There is no slowing momentum on these cool gadgets. They are here to stay. But, perhaps we can at least realize that not every time is the right time for online… and that sometimes always on is not such a good thing. Balance is a key we have not found with these devices. We need to discover the difference betwee ”can’ and ’should’ (texting or tweeting in a public bathroom stall for instance should be grounds for an immediate device time out). Employers will increasingly realize that these devices are as critical of enablers of productivity as desktop computers and will soon find themselves pushing them to all employees. Pagers and cell phones are obsolete methods of communication, and the incremental costs of a smart phone should be minimal compared to the potential return. It is the equivalent to the difference between getting an employee a calculator and a notepad instead of a computer.
A final thought is this: the adoption of smart phones broadly across business will drive new IT issues and challenges. Just like laptops, these devices will have critical data on them. Just like other technology, they will need to be supported and managed. The concept of complex and mission critical business applications being served by a handheld smart phone may not be new, but it is just now becoming a widely adopted reality.
Once again, time to rethink how we do business, how we do leisure, and where the distinctions are between the two.
Other key questions to be asking:
- Do you have a plan for the adoption of high end smart phones or are you sitting on the sidelines?
- Is your IT ready with a plan to support them, keep them secure, and integrate them into your technology plan?
- Do you understand the HR implications (what happens if hourly employees have them?)
Happy ‘handheld’ computing!
Richard Brunke
