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Not Using Smartphones Can Improve Productivity By 26%, Says Study (business-standard.com)
Smartphones do a plethora of things for us. But if you stopped using them, you might actually start seeing improvements in the work you do. From a Business-Standard report: The study, commissioned by Kaspersky Lab, showed that employees' performance improved 26 percent when their smartphones were taken away. The experiment tested the behaviour of 95 persons between 19 and 56 years of age in laboratories at the universities of Wurzburg and Nottingham-Trent. The experiment unearthed a correlation between productivity levels and the distance between participants and their smartphones. "Instead of expecting permanent access to their smartphones, employee productivity might be boosted if they have dedicated 'smartphone-free' time. One way of doing this is to enforce rules such as no phones in the normal work environment," says Altaf Halde, managing director, South Asia at Kaspersky Lab.
Whenever I am directing a commercial piece, there is always some production assistant or intern NOT paying attention because they just gotta upload this snapchat! Rubbish brains the youth have.
Yeah
Of course, if you took away smartphones, people would just spend their time surfing slashdot instead
Please.
person who has never owned a smart phone I can tell you: Würzburg
What was the % gain for those who never bought into the smartphone fad in the first place?
I come here for the love
I wouldn't mind if we combine
a) Taking a way smart phones during working hours.
b) Working hours are limited to 35 hours a week (40 hour week with an hour for lunch & breaks each day).
c) Any employee not allowed to use a smart phone during work can't be required to use a smart phone for work outside of working hours.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
When you define "productivity" to exclude any benefit from doing anything on your phone, then less time spent on your phone leads to more time available for "productivity".
The question is, why should anyone care? "Productivity" isn't the only thing that matters.
If you want to be more productive, keep your phone but delete the Facebook app.
they won't work if they don't have access to social apps so they can chat and post kitty pictures!! Whatever will we do our business is doomed!!
... that people who have smartphones are on them all the time? I have a few, but I am only on them when I'm talking or texting, and in restaurants or waiting rooms, playing games. When I'm at work, I do my work, and the phone is just there to make or receive calls related to my work.
Similarly, when I drive, the smartphone is on driver mode, just in case I receive calls. Other than that, I don't use the phone while driving. I do use it when I'm shopping - either check out the store's app (like Costco) or check out my shopping list or prices.
And at home, I use it to FaceTime or WhatsApp w/ family.
I put my smartphone on silent and forget about during my work day. Mostly to conserve battery power as I use my smartphone on the express bus, reading The Wall Street Journal in the morning and an ebook in the evenings.
I still wouldn't take the deal since I want to be able to get emergency calls (yes, they are few and far between but the "pick up your kid from school - he/she is sick" and "your mom is in the hospital" calls do happen). I'm not tied to my desk - lab time, meetings, etc. so I can't get these calls without the phone. I'm sure it depends on the type of work you do and what the parameters of it are. I'm sure many people would take the deal you outlined.
And a whopping 30% more if you starve them a little, so that they fear for their lives if they act up and risk losing their jobs.
Maybe I'll focus on productivity more when my salary is based not on the time I spend at work but on what I produce. Until then, I'll happily keep getting paid for drinking coffee, pooping, and smoking.
If by 'employees' they mean office drones and burger flippers...
You know... people did all those things before cell phones right?
Your business has a land line in every office if it requires no smart phones.
Combined with RFID tags, you don't even have to log into the phones.
I have friends who work for the government and they have no access to any kind of cell phones during the day and they do not appear to have stable locations while at work (swapping between lab, office, and a lab/plane).
My point was, companies ask for 65 hours a week of your time and then require you check email and be available for on-call 24/7 via your smart phone.
If they are going to cut your smart phone then they need to return you to normal working hours and stop calling you at 11pm.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
At least it would have been if I didn't have my smart phone.
The phones are not smart. They suck as phones, they suck as contact managers. The best thing they do so far is the still limited world of voice input. A handheld device you can give voice commands to rapidly would be ideal.
They don't want to make smartphones guys. They want you're sweet sweet money. Get with the freaking program. You think Bill Gates won lots of poker games because he always picked the right draws?
No man.. he played the people for what they were worth. That's what poker is.. human behavior and a limited set of numbers.
It never helps when the phone is smarter than the user.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Work for a large software company and i'm not allowed to have my phone up to a certain point for "security reasons" yet here I am posting to slashdot.
WHich is to say, ... or management could piss off and stop telling the huge majority of employees who don't hang on their phone all day how to live their lives.
If you have an employee who's goofing off or is otherwise incapable of ignoring his toys (you know, like posting rants to /. while compiling), then he needs some interaction with his supervisor. Banning everyone's access to their personal phones is just another of those "Zero-tolerance Policy" CFs that will never work.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The 'I have ADD' followed by a wall of text made me laugh (no offense!) and curious too... Thanks for posting that, real interesting and speaks to the larger issue very well.
Instead, companies could set reasonable standards for productivity and discipline those who don't meet them. It doesn't matter if an unproductive employee is unproductive because they are on their phone, or because they spend too much time at the watercooler, or because they are just pretty bad at their jobs.
Seems like this sort of micro-management is more likely to hurt productivity than to help it. Just let your employees do their jobs, and if they can't do their jobs replace them with someone who can. (and if you can't find someone who can do the job, reset your standards to be more reasonable.)
I have ADD and had childhood ADHD. And blah, blah, blah, tldr.
Lemme guess - you like to hear yourself talk, too?
1) Remove colleagues
2) Remove boss
3) ...
4) Profit????
Of course, if you took away smartphones ...
I expect management to do that right before IT rolls out 2 factor identification. Or maybe I read too much Dilbert. :-)
I have ADD and had childhood ADHD. And blah, blah, blah, tldr.
Lemme guess - you like to hear yourself talk, too?
I have ADHD but prefer brevity. Signal/noise ratio!
That requirement can be meet with a traditional cell that doesn't need a data plan.
I once bummed a ride from Tallahassee to Tampa with a client, and he asked me if I minded if he took a detour to see the "Fish Man". I thought he meant a fish-monger, but then he turned his car off the highway an drove it through a gap in the chainlink fence. We went up a dirt track through the scrub pines to a glade with couple of trailers -- one of which had no sides and was outfitted as a living room. There were chicken wire pens scattered around the compound full of empty beer and paint cans.
The "Fish Man" turned out to be fat, shambling, hairy mountain of a man. He was almost naked, and monochromatically red-brown: shoulder-length frizzy red-brown hair, sunburned skin with strawberry-blond fur, and red-brown denim cargo shorts. You almost couldn't tell where the shorts ended and his body began, except that there was no fur on the shorts and when he turned around he showed about ten inches of ass crack. It was about 10:30 in the morning and he was drinking his breakfast from a gallon screw-top bottle. From out in the forest came the sound of trees being cut down.
We were here because the Fish Man was an artist my friend collected. The people cutting down trees were his apprentices. They'd moved thousands of miles from their city homes to live in a squatter's camp and study under him. My friend handed the Fish Man $250 and got a fish sculpture in return, which he later explained to me was a terrrific deal because that sculpture would have fetched $1000 in a gallery, easily.
I'm not an art person, but even I could see the thing was a masterpiece; it was breathtaking. It wasn't exactly representational, you might even have called it a little cartoonish, but somehow he'd captured a sense of movement; it looked alive.
The Fish Man invited watch him turn a curved blank from a hollow cypress into another one, a process that took only about ten minutes because he did it with a goddamn chainsaw.
There's a lesson in this about powerful tools. They can't make you into anything you aren't already. If you're a genius, they allow you to express your genius faster. If you're undisciplined and lazy, they make you unproductive on a grander scale.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Most summaries of studies miss very important details and context. Where is the "real" write up of this study? I don't want to read some ignorant journalists interpretations of the results....
not using Slashdot can improve productivity by 76% !
That's nice. I'd also like a personal masseuse and a vacation house at the beach that I can use for five weeks a year. Where do we sign up?
Who could have imagined that idiots who ABSOLUTELY MUST RESPOND TO EVERYTHING, OR LET THE WHOLE WORLD KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING THE INSTANT THEY DO IT, could have lower productivity....
I wore a pager at one job, and was paged, heavily. (Except for the two months there when I wore two pagers.) I would NEVER TAKE ANOTHER JOB that wouldn't pay me time and a half, at least, to be on call.
a) What do your friends pay you to be on call 24x7x365.25? Nothing? Then WHY do you have to respond *instantly*? (And if you're driving and doing this, I hope you run into a bridge abutment, and soon, before you kill someone else.)
b) This is the same as bosses telling you to multitask. That kind of multitasking, along with you idiots on your mobile devices, is also known as "thrashing", and no, you *ain't* up to snuff.
mark "why, yes, I have a flip phone. Why? So people can *talk* to me...."
The unproductive people probably have dull, monotonous jobs with little to hold their interest. It's no wonder their phones distract them. The same people pre-smartphone would have had all other manner of distractions, from books to puzzles to hanging out at the water cooler.
When I'm working on an engaging task, I don't notice the time pass and have zero interest in my smart phone. If I get stuck with a dull task, it's amazing how easy it is to reach for the smartphone and how I'll even read the clickbait just for the hell of it.
If work could be made more engaging somehow, there would be less distraction.
Being an old fart from the times smartphones were called Filofax, I concur.
Flashback to the 80s: Worker productivity temporarily increased when they took away copies of "PC Week" tabloids and stopped people from running "Tetris". Workers eventually found other ways to kill time.
Flashback to the 90s: Worker productivity temporarily increased when they didn't let people access the World Wide Web and stopped people from running "Doom". Workers eventually found other ways to kill time.
Flashback to the 00s: Worker productivity temporarily increased when they didn't let people access Napster and stopped people from running "Quake III". Workers eventually found other ways to kill time.
You'd likely achieve much higher percentage gains if you stopped using the humans and hired the smartphone instead.
...local internet at work goes down and you can't even make a phone call, let alone answer email or get any real work done. Then you pull out the old smartphone and start working through your cell tower connection. This has happened twice now in the last week and one of the events lasted for nearly 4 hours.
Not reading slashdot can improve productivity by 80% :-)
A biased organization commissions a study, and then publishes conclusions drawn from the findings, but no data or information about how the experiment was conducted?
This is completely useless.
You want to convince me? Give me numbers & descriptions of how the experiment was run, and what criteria were used.
You know... people did all those things before cell phones right?
New infrastructure replaces the old, rather than sitting alongside it. While we did used to do it a different way, society has changed.
....in the workplace improves productivity. Changing timetrtables, layout, paint colour, etc, will all boost productivity, for a period. There's a well known experiment I'm to lazy to Google that demonstrates this. Obs I also didn't read tfa either but did they account for that?
EXACTLY.
Companies asked for more hours at work and a larger slice of your personal time, so you use your smart phone at work to pay your bills, keep up with your personal life, and deal with emergencies.
Companies want to have it both ways. They can try, but we shouldn't let them.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'll happily not carry my smartphone at work in exchange for my employer not expecting me to carry it in my off hours either.
The next great wave of delivered workplace wisdom to be spouted by vastly overpaid flavour-of-the-month management consultants: make all employees, without exception, hand in their cellphones as they arrive in the morning. Of course, the 'important people' in the company will be exempt.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Removing slashdot access, OTOH, improved productivity by 1000%
Should be published in the journal of ireproducible results.
It's all a part of keeping Millennials employed. For every 4 smart phones, there's enough lost productivity to hire another Millennial to sit around and monitor social media to find out how much fun they had doing something.
things worked out just fine in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and even the 90's without cell phones. there is NO job on the planet that requires this sort of connectivity at all. a doctor/surgeon maybe, but they have pagers for that. IT dork maybe, but again there were other options available before cell phones.
the argument that constantly gets tossed up about not having a cell phone is just bad and flawed from all angles to start with. cell phones have done very little, if anything, to improve society. they will also be going the way of the 8 track, cassette tape, cd, vhs, etc in the near future. the underlying tech will still be there and used in other devices, but the phone itself will be replaced by something else and no longer called a phone in 20-30 years.
Loved that phone... (still have it, not on a plan at the moment) Ran it through the wash a couple times... Still works... It would work as a tethered USB modem too!
It's Raining by the Beach
Please stop mandating lunch break times. I don't want to spend an extra hour at work simply because it's illegal not to. It only takes me 10 minutes to eat lunch. A required 30 minutes is already annoying and I've gotten in trouble for 'going home early' when not taking that full time at a software job claiming to have flexible hours.
My productivity would be exactly zero if I could not log into the places I need for work using the 2FA token on my smartphone.
I didn't fail any classes, I just transferred in to the school from a different zip code and came out of that behind schedule.
The consequence of this was that for my senior year, I was placed in a "special ed"/alternative school environment.
The terms of the agreement were simple:
I had a list of assignments to do. When I was done with them: I could leave early.
There was no lecture... Just assigned reading assignments from the textbook, and some end of chapter HW questions. I also had to write a few essays.
The point of this story?
I did 1.5 years of highschool in 6 months...
Next time you hear a manager complaining that 40 hour a week employees aren't accomplishing more per 40 hour unit of time: think of my story and think of the incentives for working faster when you get paid the same amount regardless of your productivity.
Personally, I'd be fine with that however I don't see how you could do 10 minutes at places that require you to leave your desk for lunch for sanitary reasons.
Before I retired, I preferred working as a contractor (as long as the wage was comparable after paying my own benefits).
If I worked 5 hours, I got paid for 5 hours. If I needed to work 15 hours, I got paid for 15 hours.
And mainly, when I walked out the door they knew I wasn't being paid and it changed their attitude.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That is fine, as long as work is not allowed to contact me for any reason on my phone, even informing me of an issue will mean I will start thinking about it. If I am not allowed to use company time for personal reason, the company should not be able to use my time for commercial reasons.
Smart phones (over and above a non-smart cellphones), are mainly for entertainment purposes. Even the possibly useful features like email, and checking your bank account are time wasters, if people get a instant response they generally just write more, it is generally more efficient just call someone if you want to talk to them than email them wait for a response, then email them again ..... Also with email the vast majority is just irrelevant and the time spend reading it vastly out ways the occasional benefit. With banking on your phone do you really need up to the minute information, or will checking once a week/month from home do? Yeah it maybe that you can give your friend some cash right then, but really you could just carry a bit of spare cash for when that rare event occurs. Does counting your steps really motivate you to exercise more, or is it just one bit of extra irrelevant data, unless you are a competitive athlete.
Its like having a TV with you everywhere, TV waste time and now you can carry that TV everywhere you go.
Yep: I would expect people would be both more productive and happier if work came in regular uninterrupted blocks of predictable length, safe in the knowledge of a sensible amount of leisure time that won't be encroached upon. The whole blurring of work/leisure thing tends to kill both productivity and pleasure.
No-one measured the distance between the water cooler and employees as a function of productivity, or the the newspaper, or the staff room. Do people assume a smart-phone is a productivity tool? If that was true, the boss could make the workplace BYOD and halve the IT budget.
That's nice. I'd also like a personal masseuse and a vacation house at the beach that I can use for five weeks a year. Where do we sign up?
You would have to sign up in Germany.
Most normal jobs I've worked, I've been bored out of my mind most of the time.
What do you expect from us?
Lower the standard hours. 8 hours is TOO many.
So when are you moving to Europe? ;ore social control of abusers. Mind you, people who are unwilling to work will find a way. Be it reading the paper, going to the bathroom more often, chatting with others at the water cooler, start smoking or whatever.
Unfortunately not everywhere a) is a fact, but as we do not have cubicles, there is a bit
b) We work 38 hours. That is a bit more than allowed, but extra hours are converted to 6 extra holidays and I have 35 or so per year. In the morning and in the afternoon we have a 15 minute break that is paid for. You smoke or do whatever you like. Lunch time is not paid for. The minimum is 30 minutes. We have one hour. This will depend from company to company and from department to department. In Belgium 1 hour is not an exception, in other countries they rather have 30 minutes and in some they want to have 3 hours lunchtime.
c) will depend on the company and the function. If you are required to have a phone you get one from the company. There are several ways on how to handle this and these are just examples:
1) You are in a team and one person gets the 'on call' phone. You will get paid for that period and if you need to do something, you will get extra
2) You are the only person that they can call? You should be making a shitload of money that a call is not a problem.
3) The calls are so far between that you do them. e.g. I was on a holiday and my boss called and I happened to pick up the phone. It was just to know in what directory a file was. There is no need to be a dick. I also knew that because he called while he knew I was away it was pretty important. That is 1 call in 5 years.
If you work more that 5 hours extra per week, it is becoming pretty obvious they are taking advantage of you or you are unfit to do your job.
Also note that there can be huge differences between the countries. Belgian working hours are stupid strict. So strict that if you want to do changes that are requested by the people, you are often not allowed to do them.
Oh and when you come, look what you want to make netto, then recalculate that to brutto for the negotiations. Look out for bonuses as they will be taxed even higher. And join a union or not. Nobody cares. Nobody will ask. Standard is extended hospitalization insurance and meal vouchers. That is 7-8EUR per day worked you get on top of your salary. They are pretty standard and nothing special. A car will be often included in Belgium as well or 100% paid for public transport.
Downside? Much harder to buy guns and you get paid per month, not per week.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The biggest creepy bit for me about smart phones is that they destroy your privacy and make everyone (work, friends, relatives) able to see your schedule. And then ask questions, hey you were off line from 1pm to 3pm today.. what were you doing?
makes me want to respond..
Well dave, I was goint to be fucking my SO for two solid hours so I turned the phone off. Thanks for asking.
Well dave, I had bad stomach cramps and was on the toilet shitting my guts out for two hours. Thanks for asking.
Well dave, I was preparing for your surprise birthday party. Thanks for asking.
People feel they have a right to know every second of my life when I have a smart phone.
And if I don't pick up on the second ring, they ask why I wasn't able to answer their last call.
Even tho I never respond so I imagine everyone must do it to everyone now.
When I was 35, two decades ago, I could still actually do whatever I wanted for 3-5 hours a day and no one had a clue and didn't ask.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Speak for yourself. I'm productive for about 3 hours a day. I spread this over my 8 hours shift to get paid, but ultimately 3 hours would produce the same results.
Go learn some history of why things are the way they are. YOU are the reason history continually repeats itself...
Oh and i'm not sure if you realize it but at some places using the restroom comes out of that "break" time. It was required because companies were horribly abusing workers in large numbers.
I'd add the time you are using to go to the restroom to your 10 minutes.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.