The traditional narrative is that the rise of digital devices, such as smartphones and tablets, has hurt our work-life balance because it’s that much easier to access our work from anywhere. After all, it’s well documented that we’re a generation that is constantly on our devices, with many checking our phones up to 100 times a day.
Whether this is a good thing or not is a point of conjecture. Indeed, research from Baylor University reminds us that our devices are unlikely to give us purpose or meaning. Indeed, they may do the opposite. These concerns have prompted some organizations to ban smartphones in the workplace.
Connectivity bans
Researchers from the universities of Konstanz, Lüneburg, and Vechta 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 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 and are minimally policed.
Affecting work-life balance
With many employees using their smartphones to perform various household chores, from booking a dentist appointment to ordering groceries, it might be reasonable to assume that banning phones in the workplace would affect our work-life balance. Research from the University of Galway attempts to find out and explores how a change in smartphone usage in a pharmaceutical company affected employees both in and out of the workplace.
The company implemented a ban on devices in the mid-90s after fears that employees would be too distracted by them and would cause health and safety incidents. This decision was then reversed after employees voiced concern that they felt disconnected from the wider world.
The researchers tracked employees who capitalized on the policy change and began to use their smartphones at work. As a control, a number of employees chose not to bring their phones to work, and the researchers also monitored their behavior.
Mixed impact
After analyzing the data, the researchers found no real impact on employee productivity after they started to use their phones at work. It did seem to provide a boost to employees in terms of their morale and wellbeing, however, as they felt connected to the outside world and reported a reduction in work-life conflicts.
One employee reported that being shut off from the outside world was often a considerable source of stress, and using their phones allowed them to join in with family issues, which also meant there was less domestic pressure at home each evening. Another said that being contactable at work meant a more equitable distribution of domestic responsibilities with their partner, which also reduced the stress they felt.
The study also found that if smartphones were banned at work, employees would often face a glut of personal messages when they turned them on at the end of each day. By having their phones on throughout the day spread those messages out and meant they felt less overwhelmed (and again, stressed).
The researchers are at pains to point out that they only studied a single organization, and the unique culture and environment at the pharmaceutical firm may not be transferable to other organizations. They also note that despite the ban on phones being overturned, employees still made limited use of them, which suggests a fairly strong culture of temperance is in place that may not exist elsewhere.
Moderate usage
So the key seems to be to ensure that any usage is moderate. This, rather than outright bans, is the best way to ensure that employees feel trusted, engaged, and less stressed, while productivity remains largely unaffected.
The researchers urge employers to focus on developing a culture where people are well aware of their responsibilities and the expectations the firm has from them, and then give them a large helping of trust to go about their work in the best way they see fit.
After all, at a time when employee engagement is already at record lows and stress is on the rise for a wide number of reasons, a largely futile smartphone ban seems a poor option to add to that stress and disengagement given its negligible impact on productivity. Will this be enough to quell the debate? I suspect not, but hopefully at least some managers will choose to follow the evidence.
