Both the internet and social media have attracted a fair degree of skepticism in the workplace, with many organizations attempting to ban or restrict their usage over fears that employees would misuse them or waste time in some way.  Of course, the reality was that not only are these tools often vital to our job, but even when we do use them for leisure purposes, this is often providing us with a vital mental break that allows us to renew our efforts with gusto.

One might assume, therefore that we might learn from history and the thought of banning smartphones would nary cross our minds.  Researchers from the universities of Konstanz, Lüneburg, and Vechta explores the organizations who continue to exhibit skepticism towards technology and have taken various countermeasures to limit usage or even outright ban them in the workplace.

Smartphone bans

The analysis found that there are indeed some benefits from banning smartphones at work, with the benefits generally depending on the type of work being done.  For instance, if tasks are fairly routine, then bans can help to boost efficiency, but this wasn’t the case for more complex tasks where bans made no real difference in productivity.

The researchers suggest that this may be because smartphone bans at work suggest to employees that they’re not trusted by their managers and lack basic freedoms of choice.

Despite this, the authors highlight that smartphone bans seem commonplace as managers fear the distraction they provide staff.  Whereas few initiate a hard ban, many seem to use soft bans where phones are not encouraged by the bans are minimally policed.

“A survey we conducted in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Berlin showed that about 20 percent of the companies interviewed already work with soft smartphone bans,” the researchers say.

Social norms

When the researchers delved deeper into when such bans were effective and when they weren’t, the key seemed to be in terms of how the bans managed to change perceptions about what is socially acceptable in the workplace.

“Social norms play an important role in the context of bans. Soft bans could lead to staff themselves seeing it as less appropriate to use their smartphones during work time – due to perceived social pressure,” they explain. “This means that companies might hope to increase productivity in the workforce with soft bans – and without penalties and monitoring leading to distrust, rejection or a negative impact on productivity as a result of declining motivation.”

Such an approach appears to introduce a sufficiently voluntary aspect to following the rule so as to make it more acceptable among employees while still reducing the distracting aspect of smartphones in the workplace.

“The perceived meaningfulness of a ban as well as retaining the right to make autonomous decisions about your own behavior are with great probability determining success factors not only in the workplace context and are therefore more expedient than enforcing bans by means of coercion and surveillance,” the researchers conclude.