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Using Employee-Owned Technology in the Workplace?
digitalvengeance asks: "As of Monday, my company is initiating a 'no cell phone' policy at all of our offices, including the IT department, where I work. I consider my cellular phone a necessity both in my personal and work lives. I have a number of servers and custom applications configured to notify me by text message, in the event of a problem. I am considering refusing to take work calls or text messages on my personal cell phone, and even quitting in protest of the new policy. How have other Slashdot readers dealt with policies regarding use of employee-owned technology at work? Any suggestions as to how I can get this policy overturned without looking like someone who wants to spend my working time on my cell rather than coding?"
It seems cell phones cause people to become sort of useless on the job, as they will tend to do anything but pay attention when they have easy access to unlogged phones. Our system in Arlington actually watches all calls, so our employee personal calls are logged.
That being said, the company just initated a policy to give everyone in IT blackberries (the nice color ones) and phones. Show them a business benefit (read: $$$ increase), and you'll get your cell phone back.
Set up your monitoring system to only send email during the day. Have it send text messages to your cell phone after hours. Pretty simple and non-intrusive.
To follow up on the gov't and the responsible thing to do, you see bans happening more and more now because of the new picture phones - they don't want confidential information leaving, which certainly makes sense. No longer do people have 'just cell-phones', they have more and more gadgets with it now, which may jeopardize businesses.
Here is my delima. I pay my phone bill, it is my cell phone. Yet 98% of the calls I recieve are work related. We have a zero tolerance policy also for cell phones. Which I adhere to as does everyone else. When I forget to turn MY phone back on after leaving work, I get my ass chewed. Yet my company pays for none of the minutes they use. I recently had my cell phone disconnected for currency issues ( lack thereof ). I was told that I had one week in which to have it turned back on or lose my job.
I had no clue what to do in this situation either. It has gotten to the point where I could no longer afford the bill I was getting every month for a service that turned out to be work related. I have tried showing and even turning in a copy of my cell bill showing the company use, and requesting reimbursement. You know what, it never happened. Yet make one long distance call at work, and you get blasted.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
As a DBA I face the same type of thing every day. When setting up a server I ask for their tolerance of downtime and suggest solutions. If they aren't willing to 'pay' for those features then thats their call.
Also, why were the cellphones banned? Is there sensitive work done onsite? Are they afraid of the new cellphones with built in cameras? Does it interfere with some electronics? There may be a valid reason behind the ban.
As long as your ass is covered (ie, you explained the situation to managment) then whats the problem? Are alpha-numeric pagers banned as well? Why not pick up one of those? You can still get your alerts and friends can still contact you.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
Clarification from the submitter:
Though this policy was abandoned due to my concerns prior to being implemented, it still has relevance in many places. Let me answer some of the questions that have been asked.
Work was, in-fact, saying that I cannot bring in my personal cell phone. Though they don't pay me for for the phone bill itself, I do get compensated for responding to server-down pages or other problems after hours and this more than pays for the phone bill.
Why are they doing this? The stated reason is security. We've been the victim of intellectual property theft due to camera phones, but in my case: it isn't an issue. I have, in effect, clearance to any and all company documents at this location and all others.
As for forwarding my responsibilities to my supervisor, it just won't work. I report directly to the president of the company and he is not exactly a power-user. I've been with the company just over three years, and he's never even glanced at any of my coding work. He simply believes the heads of other departments when they note that their IT systems are doing well, saving money, or whatever the case is.
To save this poor guy a headache: I am not Brian Cancio. I don't own that domain and have no involvement with it whatsoever. Digitalvengeance is just a slashdot ID as my usual alias was already taken.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
IIRC, most hospital rules regarding cell phone use has more to do with preventing interference to IV pumps (cell phones have been known to do this, causing the pumps to change their dosing rate or to shut down to idle) than to pacemakers.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
not exactly correct. The cellular phones interfere with the cardiac monitoring equipment and some of the imaging equipment (although i really doubt that a cell phone is going to last long enough to mess up an MRI). However it is the frequency they work on that causes the problem. That is why pagers are so popular in the hospital setting.
Picture phones are another problem. The advent of picture phones has led to bans of cell phones in medical, children, exercise, entertainment environments. While they exist they are poorly enforced.
The other issue mentioned about governemnt and security. Well if you are in one of thos jobs that has cell phone bans, i am surprised i am even having to explain this to you. YOU CAN BE TRACKED BY YOUR CELL PHONE. (watch "the recruit" they focus in on that one a lot). If you dont understand the implications of being tracked you probably shouldnt have that classified clearance you have.
Well my 2 cents worth.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
The actual reason given, is that it supposedly interfers with wireless monitors, like in ICU's and other critical care areas. In 25 years of hospital environments I have never seen this happen. Strong magnets from metal detectors cause much more interference with these things than cell phones.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
Your line of argument raises the whole nannyism question. Is the lack of a picture phone really going to impede someone bent on doing the unethical?
In the case of a physically secure environment, one where your bags have to be checked on the way in and out, any data storage device of any kind is going to have to be explained at the checkpoints. They're not going to let you have a CD-R burner at your desk, etc.
The ultimate fear in such an enviroment is data leaving by airwave. Bluetooth is a mighty scary thing for administrators in such an environment, in that a bluetooth wireless mouse's access point could talk to a bluetooth cell phone, and then that cell phone can make a connection to the untrusted world. That'd could even worse than somebody taking a picture of their display with classifed info up.
When secure environments are being discussed, nobody's ever considered fully trusted.
During the first week, I raised the issue with HR that in the event something failed, how would I be reached if I wasn't near my home phone? Mind you, I owned a cell phone, but did not carry it at work. They promptly said "you have a cell phone, right?"
I explained that the cell phone was my wife's (true, inasmuch as the account was in her name) and that I did not carry a personal cell phone. Once they got over the shock of this, and I had convinced them that it is a very bad thing to find out in the morning that a critical service was down all night, they sprang for a cell phone.
You need to first make a case as to why a cell phone, any cell phone, is critical to the success of the business. Don't try to make a case based on how it is a time saver for you, or saves you hassle, or anything based on you. You don't matter in the grand scheme of things; you're just a cog in the giant gears of the corporate machine. But show them that those gears may cease to turn should you not be quickly told of a server crash, and they will realize the importance of a cell phone.
Actually,
It's only older (5-10+ years old) medical equipment that *may* be affected, and usually only if the cell phone is placed in very close proximity (2-4 inches away) from said device. There are documented reports of cell phones interfering with EKG's, but there is a surprising amount of EMF in a hospital already that cardiologists are trained to tease out when looking at EKG's. Plus there are no documented cases (to my knowledge) where a piece of medical equipment malfunctioned as a result of cell phone use that led to an adverse event. Much of this started with a MAYO report from 2000 or so which documented the intereference. The MAYO article very clearly indicated that the cell phone had to be right next to the device in question, but the press conveniently left this part off when reporting on the study.
I can assure you that, in hospitals, you will continue to see relaxed standards on cell phones, particularly as the amount of wireless technology increases in hospitals. Between wireless laptops at patient bedside, the increased use of wireless PDA's by providers, and the necessary infrastructure to make sure these things work, cell phone restrictions will be a thing of the past. About the only thing you might see are continued restrictions on the use of cell phones in very close proximity to a patient who is hooked up to some device. But even that will go away with time.
I know this is off topic, but this is dangerously close to junk science. A thoughtful review of the biomedical engineering literature is pretty clear that cell phones are not a threat to anyone's safety in a hospital.
jeff
Well, the pager network are being shut down in Denmark and the last user have had their subscriptions cancelled.
I would guess that this policy was implemented because people were using their personal cell phones for their own personal calls on company time.
I would guess the policy exists because of the possible security threat. Notice that a LOT of the newer cell phone models have cameras on them? Think about how this enables corporate espionage or sabotage. How easy would it be for someone with a cell phone/camera to surreptitiously take a picture of a sensitive document and send it to the company's competitor?
This is one of the many reasons the three-letter government agency headquartered in Langley, Virginia, does not allow cell phones inside the building. (BTW, said building is named the George Bush Center for Intelligence. Makes me crack up every time I see street signs for it.)
The existing situation was that safety rules had been established. Either from the start, or over the course of time, the workers started to bend the rules. Why? In order to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. They figured out that, *normally at least* a forklift could safely travel at ten mph instead of 5. They'd been willing to forego breaks to get the job done mroe quickly, so things wouldn't stack up.
The management says you're responsible for damage done if you aren't following the safety rules. The union says no problem, we'll follow the rules. However, following the rules strictly meant that it would take more people, possibly more equipment to do the same job. A forklift traveling at 5 mph can wind up moving as little as half the cargo as one traveling at 10 mph. Taking a break everyone had ignored before means fifteen minutes less work time per person per day; at the very least, it means that a job that could be done in ten minutes might now take 25, because the break's scheduled to come in the middle, and not taking the break at the scheduled time is breaking the safety rules.
The goal of the union wasn't necessarily to say, "Hey, we shouldn't be responsible for our actions." It was at least in part to say, "We haven't followed the rules strictly to benefit you; you want the speed and cost benefits of breaking the rules, you accept responsibility for when those rules break the equipment."
Under the same circumstances, I would be inclined to do the same thing; it was a simple CYA maneuver.
Note: This all assumes the situation was as stated in the original post - I have no actual knowledge of the incident, other than some vague recollection that there was an incident holding up shipping on the left coast before Christmas a few years back.
R David Francis
You've got to be kidding me. Did you read that post at all?
Management wanted it both ways - they wanted the union workers to ignore the rules so that they could get the job done faster, and they wanted to blame the union workers when something went wrong.
The union said "ok, fine. we'll just follow the rules then."
As it usually does when insanely restrictive safety rules are implemented and followed, work slowed to a crawl.
Actually, there are ways to find out the position of a cell phone with a fairly small margin of error - tens or hundreds of meters, depending on the density of cell towers. Location-based services depend on it, as do emergency services.
Also, one way of getting the cell phone to communicate without the user doing anything or even noticing it is using service SMS. These are routinely being used to transmit maintenance info to the cell phone. The German police has tracked people this way, and have gotten intro trouble for doing so because they should only be allowed to track the signal if the cell phone if the user sends text messages or calls someone.
I am not a cell phone engineer, though, this is really bits and pieces I picked up reading the usual tech outlets.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Do you charge the company for accepting calls on your personal phone? If you are then you are getting ripped off. Our company pays for all my mobile bill (including personal calls) and in return this is the way they can contact me whenever it is needed. Sure you get the occasional call at wierd hours but for the $$$ it saves every month who cares?
Also one thing to remember. Try and keep the phone personal and charge the company for the bill every month. This way when you leave the company they cannot keep your phone and number which saves you the hassle of changing numbers.
[Please type your sig here.]
If I didn't already have a company cell phone, I'd get one (it seems to be necessary for the job description). I'd just give out my desk phone to everyone instead of the cell phone. I'd have outages and such page the phone directly, and I'd set the phone to forward to the cell when I'm away. They could review the phone records all they wanted, all they'd see is that the work number kept calling my cell phone, so they would all be "work related" calls.
If it is truly a "no cell phone" dictate including no work cell phones, then just go as high up as you need to to explain why that is impractical. It worked for me when I was in a job where a reorg resulted in the IT department being grouped with PR and so all people in IT were required to wear ties. A calm explanation that was ignored followed by threats of lawsuits from a tie getting caught in a fan and the dress code was changed.
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Sliently ignore most rules, and they will be silently re-written so as not to apply to you.
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The above usually works best, but the below is probably more politically acceptable.
Some time back there was a bunch of postings about security measures that sound like something but do nothing of any value in terms of making anybody more secure, and usually inconvenience everybody. These stellar ideas are hot and bold and bad. They usually come about to address some particularly instance of abbuse commited by some particular person. They are also almost always rescended, sometimes only after that person is fired.
So there is probably someone who is sitting on their butt chatting all day, but since it is *their* phone they can't be gotten for misuse of company facility. Meanwhile their work is probably just good enough to not clearly be sub-standard and their noise-making is annoying the people around them.
There is also a high probability that some part of this issue is the latest panic-craze about people using their "camera phones" to "steal company IP" etc. (Which is a nice new fad and quite popular among the PHBs lately.)
So someone makes a "policy".
So write a memo to whoever your supervisor is that quickly and concisely states the following:
1) you have a particular circumstance that will cause the compnay grief if you comply.
2) you have examined the options and the time-effort-cost ratio to implement the inferior solutions (if any) are unacceptable for some particular reason.
3) that you presume that reasonable provisions for exceptions exist where the company interests are best served.
4) that given the the above circumstances you believe that continuing to use the existing solution is the correct action, so "unless otherwise directed" (and/or "funded") you will continue to use your cell phone as you do today.
This creates several things.
1) you get your way.
2) you have documented that this is not being done behind anybodies back.
3) your *supervisor* gets a degree of plausable deniability, he doesn't have to take any proactive action to give you your way.
Generally this is all you would need to do. And since the entire military lives and dies on "unless otherwise directed" memos, if you are working for a defense contractor or ex-military person, or military-heavy company nobody will even batt and eye.
Either way, as long as you don't flaunt your exception nobody much should care.
The second of tonights lessons:
The truth is that I walked around in jeans and T for years at a company where the president had decided that everybody should wear suit and tie. There was no way I was going to do the physical parts of my IT job (climbing under people's desks and behind server racks) in suit-pants let alone a jacket and tie. There were only two "incidents" over this.
1) "If you dressed that way, and I was your boss, I'd send you home for the day." to which I responded "and I'd go, but I'd be back dressed no different the next day." (This guy was not my supervisor, was in fact nobodies supervisor, and was generally a busybody {which is why he was nobodies supervisor})
2) "How come you dress like that? I should go home and change!" to which I responded "I don't care if they fire me, if you can say the same, dress any way you please." This was the cube-mate of an acquaintance who was feeling dis-empowered and all entitled.
In short, when you step out of company-line for any reason, even a compelling one, heck *especially* a compelling one, you should expect to have the ineffectual middle-management suckups, political marshales, and enfranchisement-challenged to become somewhat inflamed. You should already know how you are going to deal (or not) with these people.
And finally rate your desire to live in that job, where you are presumed untrustworthy (or whatever) .
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
those TLA sites don't allow ANY electronics into the building... well actually thats not true, you can bring electronics into the building but they will either
a) take it away from you when you enter, or
b) take it away from you when you leave
but on no account will they let you take anything electronic out of the building
its like when they baned "Furbys" and everyone said how stupid thats was. But what is a Furby? its a microphone and CPU and some memory. And the difference between a Furby and a "listening device"? some software and a hidden antenna.
As for camara cell phones being a risk, if you have seen the size of some of the new digital cameras then you know that cell phones are no risk by comparision to a lot of other options out there. Like this digital camera pen http://www.hard2buy4.co.uk/Gadgets-and-Boys-Toys/
-jon
So, what happens is, the foreman (who is also union), stops getting any requests to waive the signature exemption, and spends the entire day with a clipboard doing paperwork. Clearly the foreman can't be held responsble for this action, and management doesn't really have a way to lean on the drivers and crane operators to kick in the exemption.
But, it isn't exactly what most people think of "work-to-rule." There's a good reason for the set-up, because the crane operators are forklift drivers need a way to protect themselves from damage claims. But it seems to me a little more like a strike action, even though it isn't, than simply strict "work-to-rule."
Like the parent said, raise your concern that this could hinder your productivity for the reasons that you stated. If they don't go for that then suggest that they give you a company paid for cell phone or pager so that you can receive these messages. In the end they might just find it more cost effective to let you use your own cell phone at work and give you the exemption.
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." Linus Torvalds