How to Use a Cell Phone at Work
Bottom
Line:Cell
phones have become ingrained in modern life. But many professionals
still find it inconsiderate when colleagues use them during business
meetings—especially formal gatherings.
You’re
in the middle of an important meeting, with crucial issues to
discuss and tough decisions to make. Suddenly, one of your
colleagues pulls out a cell phone and studies the screen. How do you
react? He could be looking at an important email, one highly
relevant to the meeting; on the other hand, he could be
surreptitiously checking the score of a big game or reading a
friend’s text. Cell phones are ubiquitous in modern society and
offer an ever-increasing range of services, raising the question:
What’s the proper protocol for their use in the workplace?
For
many people, cell phones have become an essential part of doing
business. Indeed, one 2007 study established that even then
marketers and sales representatives were using their mobile devices
to reach an unprecedented number of clients and potential
customers—not only increasing their individual performance and
productivity, but also boosting their firms’ responsiveness and
profit margins.
However,
research published in 2005 showed that about 60 percent of employees
already said they got routinely stressed at work because of their
colleagues’ rudeness—and some
pinpointed the impersonal nature of cell phones as either a prime
cause or a symptom of this underlying incivility. When gazing into a
screen supplants face-to-face communication, employees can feel
detached and isolated from their co-workers.
Even
today, despite the proliferation of cell phones, researchers have
yet to examine how employees feel during the all-too-common moment
when their colleagues’ phones buzz and they bow their heads, work
their thumbs, and become momentarily distracted from the
proceedings. But a new studybased
on feedback from a varied workforce has developed a code of conduct
to inform employees and managers about the types of mobile phone use
that most irk their associates, whether it’s in the conference
room or around the water cooler.
To
start, the authors surveyed more than 200 employees—from
executives to warehouse workers, ages 30 to 65-plus—at an East
Coast beverage distributor. The employees answered open-ended
questions about cell phone use in their workplace, and provided
examples of specific behavior they’d witnessed.
In
the study’s second phase, the authors surveyed 350 employees from
throughout the United States, asking them to rank the
appropriateness of eight types of cell phone use in both formal
meetings and informal gatherings, such as an offsite lunch. These
cell phone actions ranged from the relatively innocuous, such as
checking the time, to the more obviously disruptive, such as
stepping away to take a call.
The
researchers found that even though cell phones have become
indispensable to modern life, professionals overwhelmingly resent it
when their co-workers use them during meetings. More than 87
percent of respondents said they thought it was inappropriate for
colleagues to place or answer a call during a formal meeting, 84
percent said the same of writing texts or emails, and more than
three-quarters frowned on checking email or browsing online. These
numbers fell slightly for informal meetings, but still, about
two-thirds of those surveyed considered sending texts, answering a
call, or surfing the Internet to be particularly out of line.
Professionals
overwhelmingly resent it when their co-workers use cell phones
during meetings.
Age,
unsurprisingly, skews the results. A majority of employees between
21 and 30 said they had no problem with people checking texts or
email during formal gatherings, and they were more than three times
as likely as their colleagues older than 40 to view this behavior as
acceptable. The divide widens even further in informal settings,
indicating significant generational differences about cell phone
use, especially at offsite events or working lunches.
Gender
also plays a major role. Women are much less tolerant of mobile
phone use, particularly at informal get-togethers. Men were nearly
twice as lenient as their female counterparts when colleagues
checked and sent texts and answered their phone, seemingly
indicating that female professionals have higher standards of
civility when interacting informally with co-workers.
The
study also holds lessons for businesspeople traveling to or working
in certain regions of the country. Professionals in the Western part
of the United States were the least accepting of colleagues who
whipped out their gadgets in formal meetings, whereas those in the
Southwest held the greatest disregard for mobile phone use during
more casual occasions. The authors posit that the Southwest may
place a higher emphasis on hospitality and manners than other
regions, but as for the West Coast, the researchers were at a loss
for an explanation—perhaps Hollywood moguls and Silicon Valley
visionaries have a particular sensitivity to keeping their formal
meetings on track.
Finally,
status also has an effect on perceptions. Employees expressed far
more displeasure when their manager broke from a meeting to use his
or her cell phone than when their co-workers did, perhaps perceiving
the manager’s behavior as dismissive. In turn, professionals who
earned more money looked down on their subordinates’ cell phone
use. The balance of power clearly plays a crucial role in
perceptions of appropriate mobile phone use.
The
results also hint at a larger issue. As a 2012 study showed,
managers have in recent years placed a higher value on hiring
employees who display courtesy—loosely defined as a blend of good
manners, social etiquette, and respectfulness—than the
historically sought-after “soft” skills such as a positive
attitude, professionalism, and work ethic. In the coming years, one
of the best and most fundamental ways for employees to demonstrate
courteousness in the workplace may be balancing the use of their
smartphones with old-fashioned interpersonal dynamics. Paying
attention to the demographic differences underlined in this study
should also enable business communication instructors to help
professionals understand how age, gender, location, and job title
could affect others’ perceptions of mobile phone use at work.
Source:Perceptions
of Civility for Mobile Phone Use in Formal and Informal Meetings,
by Melvin C. Washington (Howard University), Ephraim A. Okoro
(Howard University), and Peter W. Cardon (University of Southern
California), Business
and Professional Communication Quarterly,
Mar. 2014, vol. 77, no. 1
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