MOBILE TELEPHONY; RAMPANT USAGE DURING WORKING HOURS, IMPACT ON PRODUCTIVITY!!!

Telephony technology got underway in 1843 when an analytical chemist named Michael Faraday began researching space to see if it could conduct electricity. Flash forward to 2011, and the mobile telephony has become a part of our daily lives. Much more than just a phone, the mobile phone continues to revolutionize the way we communicate with each other. The predominant purpose of the mobile telephony is to enable communication between individuals regardless of the distance.

The use of mobile telephony during working hours within our Ghanaian setting has been on the rise in recent years. This act has firmly gained grounds in the Ghanaian setting and has eaten deep into most corporate environments.

The use of mobile telephony during working hours clearly spells out numerous advantages.  For instance, using mobile phones in business can boost productivity, mobility, safety, and morale of your workforce. They can as well help employees to improve customer service remain in contact with the office.

Connecting a mobile phone or a laptop to the internet can give employees an even greater degree of flexibility.  But is that the situation in our Ghanaian setting? Well, it may be surprising to know that most corporate setups in our immediate environment that permit the use of mobile telephony during working hours are facing serious challenges.

In most cases, employees are always doing otherwise of the intended purpose of the mobile phone during working hours. A typical Ghanaian employee is most likely to be using the mobile phone for unrelated kinds of stuff like frequently visiting his social media platforms and engaging in irrelevant social media argument. Just walk into a corporate setting and greet the receptionist who is so lost in her official duties and engrossed with irrelevant social media activities, you may be tempted to give a resounding slap. For a nurse on duty who is so much enthused with ‘snapchat’, a patient is nowhere near her business. That is quite obvious.

These acts in the long run adversely affect productivity.  There are strong adverse impacts on productivity that can emerge from using mobile phones during working hours for the wrong purposes. For instance, there is a significant workflow disruption. When one is always on the phone for unrelated work kinds of stuff, there is some sort of employee workflow disturbance and this decreases productivity in effect.
Moreover, there is a compromised work-life balance. When employees are always on their usual social media hunt and calls that are not related to work, there is just a little over zero input to work, thus productivity tends to decrease to a minimal level. Personal life most often gets in the way of productivity when pressing needs are not prioritized.

An organization is also most likely to encounter legal issues when its employees go contrary to laws that prohibit them from using the cell phone in certain instances. For instance, if law prohibits one from using handheld phones while driving and staff on duty go contrary to such law, the organization, as well as the staff, will face serious legal issues. Also, when employees use company mobile phones for reasons unrelated to work, the devices can become an unwelcome distraction at the very least and a legal and operational risk at worst.

Although the use of mobile telephony has a clearly spelt out positive impact on productivity, there are also clearly outlined adverse effects that can emerge from using the mobile telephony for the wrong purpose during working hours in our Ghanaian setting. One should be mindful of when to use the mobile telephony and for what purposes to avoid a decline in productivity and to as well ensure some sort of sanity within the organisaton.