It is a well known fact that millions of man hours are lost every year due to
people using online social network in office hours. Hence, corporates usually ban/restrict access to social networking sites at work-place to keep their employees away from wasting productive hours. But the
advent of SmartPhones is fast changing the game plan!
A smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability and
connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. They may be thought of as
handheld computers integrated with a mobile telephone, but while most feature
phones are able to run applications based on platforms such as Java ME, a
smartphone allows the user to run and multitask applications that are native
to the underlying hardware.
Smartphones run complete operating system software providing a platform for
application developers. Thus, they combine the functions of a camera phone and
a personal digital assistant (PDA).
You can easily access internet and social networking sites on your smartphone
inside office premises. The introduction of 3G network has made the surfing of
online videos also easier. The sites open much faster and upload pictures and videos is much
faster now.
Employees are now using their phone to record and share content on the go with these phones. Obviously they don't need to wait to go home and then log in and share their pictures with friends.
So, the benefit that companies extract from blocking the social networking sites have started to vanish. Even though they still need to keep investing in blocking these sites on their intranet network to keep atleast one gate closed, they are struggling to increase the productivity as have little control over what can be done through SmartPhones.
Internet On SmartPhone cannot be restricted by a company. Its a personal choice and one can use it anytime and anywhere. The data access charges are reducing every day and the day is not far when 3G would be subscribed by everyone.
It would be interesting to know what companies do to save their valuable man-hours going forward. The addiction to update their status and notify friends is what has created the Facebook what it is today and you can't keep your employees away from it.
How Companies tackle the SmartPhone in Offices
Currently, there is no full proof mechanism to protect data and man hours from
getting lost, but here are some of the steps that i know some companies have
adopted:
- Cell Phones NOT allowed in office hours: Sounds weird, but it is
true. I know companies who have banned cell phone usage inside office.
Employees are provided with safe locked storage at reception to store the
mobiles while coming into office.
This is done to safeguard the highly confidential data along with keeping the
distractions away. Employees do have access to landline phones at their desk
for any phone calls that they need to make.
- Cell Phones are allowed, but NOT camera phones: Most of the banking
companies with IT operations do NOT allow camera phones in their premises.
This is to avoid any undesired capture of data and design images.
It is true that SmartPhones do allow access to internet, but they only add to
wasted time if the employee uses it to do what he is not supposed to do in
office hours.
If one uses it dilligently and to perform the official work like making
presentations, checking official emails etc., a company can really benefit
from this gadget.
Comments and suggestions are most welcome.