University of Galway academic Prof Eoin Whelan’s research found that outright bans on phones negatively impacted work-life balance and wellbeing.
Conventional wisdom suggests that using a smartphone in a work or academic setting can be distracting and counterproductive. However, a new study has found links between smartphone use and improved work-life balance. Not only that, but the researchers behind the study found that smartphone use can potentially help reduce workers’ stress levels.
The study was carried out by University of Galway and University of Melbourne academics. They did a lengthy study on the workplace phone usage policy of a European branch of a global pharma company.
Prior to the study, the company had a strict policy when it came to employees using their personal phones during working hours. This was imposed back in the 1990s because employers feared workers would be distracted while working around dangerous chemicals.
But in the intervening years, employees and management had expressed their dissatisfaction at the policy. Staff reported feeling disconnected while senior management worried that the branch was being ‘technophobic’ banning smartphones.
Australian and Irish-based academics tracked around 40 of the company’s employees over a one-year period as they availed of a less restrictive approach on smartphone use. They also tracked a similar number of employees who chose to keep adhering to the company’s ban on mobile phones at work.
The findings revealed that performance at work did not decline for the workers who chose to use their smartphones. Employees who used their phones said they were able to check in on their personal lives for family needs, which reduced their stress and also helped to lessen the amount of notifications they would have to face at the end of the working day.
Prof Eoin Whelan, from University of Galway’s JE Cairnes School of Business and Economics, said, “Rather than enforcing a ban on smartphones in the workplace, our experiences in tracking the introduction of smartphones in this company suggest a more effective strategy would be to establish an organisational climate where the company expectation for smartphone behaviours are known.”
Whelan added that “Managers must realise the unintended consequences of forcing a smartphone ban.”
“Preventing phones in the workplace can increase work-life conflict, which in turn has significant implications for work performance, job satisfaction, absenteeism, turnover intentions, as well as general wellbeing.”
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