Now They're Banning All Mobile Phones At Work Too
from the communication-is-bad dept
Last week much was made of the story of a company in the UK banning the use of employee-to-employee email at work. Now, the mayor of a town in Wisconsin is looking to ban all personal mobile phones from the workplace. He's upset that people are getting personal phone calls (he's also upset that they trade stocks, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the mobile phones). Of course, should such a ban go into effect, those phone calls would immediately shift over to their office-lines - meaning that it will do nothing useful other than annoy city workers. Also, the mayor seems to ignore the fact that by taking a couple of personal phone calls a day, employees may be able to take care of things that they would otherwise need to leave the office for. Why is it that certain people seem to think that because a certain technology can be misused it needs to be completely banned (blocking out all of the valuable uses as well)? Trusting your employees can go a long way. If they're not getting their job done, that's one thing, but simply banning a technology because someone up top is upset about a few personal phone calls isn't exactly smart management. Found via textually.org.
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Give Technology to Those Who Need It Instead of Th
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The mayor sounds like an idiot. What difference does it make if the personal call is on a cell phone or an office phone? Why shouldn't the employees be allowed to make personal calls at work? Does he assume that they have no other life than work? I guess if a kid is sick and the school needs to call they will have to wait until after 5:00.
The guy who is trading stocks will just have to learn to do it via the Internet.
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Reasonable Plan
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GOOD RIDDANCE!!
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Liability for Banning Personal Cell Phones
However, banning all personal cell phones can be a business liability.
If an employee is forbidden to have a personal cell phone or receive personal calls on company phones and a family emergency occurs, the company could be liable for any preventable result associate with the employees inability to deal with such an emergency.
The financial cost of such a libility as well as the publicity would not be worth a blanketed ban.
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