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In the wake of Yahoo and Best Buy ordering telecommuters back to the office, one of the strongest arguments for working from home is that it increases productivity. While nixing the commute and eliminating distractions certainly helps, there’s also another reason why the home office is so good for productivity.
The ubiquity of mobile devices today means that the “home office” has become more of a concept than a place. The dark underbelly of greater flexibility is that we find ourselves checking and responding to work email when we’re at the gym, out on dates and watching our kids’ soccer games.
“The technology that’s happened over the last decade or so is tremendous... but at the same time, I feel constantly connected now,” said James Wagner, a salesman at Rema Foods in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., who upgraded to a new BlackBerry about a year ago.
“You get conditioned to constantly be looking at the thing. For example, I get up in the morning... I’m literally still in bed and I’m checking emails.”
Statistics indicate that Wagner has plenty of company. Market research firm IDC predicts that 137 million smartphones will be shipped to the United States this year, a 14 percent increase over last year. According to the Pew Research Center, 45 percent of Americans now own a smartphone, and 31 percent own a tablet. College graduates and those whose annual household income is $75,000 or more are much likelier to own a smartphone.
As technology advances, mobile devices can do more — which lets us do more. In particular, the road to constant connectivity is paved with iPads.
“The smartphone is a little too little, the laptop is a little too big,” said Gil Gordon, author of "Turn It Off: How to Unplug from the Anytime-Anywhere Office Without Disconnecting Your Career." A tablet “hits the sweet spot there... Things you probably wouldn’t think of doing with a smartphone you can do on an iPad and don’t think twice about it.”
“Total USA tablet shipments reached 45.2 million units in 2012, up from 32.4 million in 2011,” Tom Mainelli, IDC Research Director, Tablets, said via email. “We're forecasting the U.S. market to hit 62.6 million units in 2013.”
Stefani Stankiewicz, an account manager at Manning Automotive Marketing in Wyckoff, N.J., replaced her Droid with an iPhone and got an iPad about a year ago. “I can do a lot more with the iPhone,” she said. “It’s a blessing and a curse.”
Stankiewicz said her devices give her near-constant contact with her job. “I have a G-chat app... Yesterday, I left early because my grandfather was in the hospital, and I was G-chatting with everybody,” she said.
American workers have been sold a promise that the constant access afforded by our mobile devices would give us more flexibility as to where and when we worked. The problem is that all these late-night and weekend emails aren’t replacing hours spent in the office — they’re adding to them.
“I call it my necessary evil,” Wagner said. “If I didn’t do that and keep up, it would be impossible to keep up with what’s getting thrown at me every day.”
A Bureau of Labor Statistics report found that between half and two-thirds of telecommuting hours are on top of a standard 40-hour workweek. “The ability of employees to work at home may actually allow employers to raise expectations for work availability during evenings and weekends and foster longer workdays and workweeks,” researchers warned.
While we could just turn off those devices when we’re eating dinner or on vacation, we don’t. A Salary.com survey found that a third of people say they feel anxious when they can’t check their work email or voicemail for an “extended” period of time.
For an upcoming vacation, Stankiewicz said she planned to not check her work email, but admitted she might cave. “I’m going to really try not to. I might peek and check just to see what’s going on... because it’s right there.”
“It’s a double edged sword,” said Rob Smith, co-author of "Telework: A Critical Component of Your Total Rewards Strategy." “The technology has advanced more quickly than the policies and procedures in the workplace that would allow for a proper work-life balance. We haven’t found that right balance yet.”
Companies generally don’t come out and say they want their employees on-call 24/7, but some workers say there are clear signs from management that answering emails outside of work hours is encouraged if not outright expected.
Knowing that the boss is burning the midnight oil, for instance, can make employees feel obligated to do the same. Wagner said it wasn’t uncommon for his company’s president, with whom he works closely, to send him multiple emails on Sunday nights.
"He certainly works as hard as anyone... Without saying it, he certainly likes when you respond at any time. He likes to see that his people are always connected,” he said.
“In this economy, with so many people out of work, they’re almost afraid of not being seen as accessible and available and responsive,” Gordon said. “So they let the technology intrude at the dinner table or their kid’s soccer game.”
This spillover can cause tension in people’s personal relationships. “We’ll be sitting there, having dinner, and it’ll be sitting on the table,” Wagner said of his omnipresent BlackBerry. “My wife... has literally held it over a toilet before.”
“My boyfriend does complain that I’m on my phone answering emails a lot,” Stankiewicz said. “Am I being more productive or am I stopping myself from having a social life?”
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I leave the office at 4:30. E-mail gets one check, right after dinner, in case a west coast client sent something in. Weekends....not happening. I just got a bonus that was 13% of base so I'm obviously proving my value without sacrificing my marriage or my sanity.
Nothing wrong with that approach, but I also think it's fine if you're like me and like to check email a couple times at night and at least a few times most weekends.
I know people that can't prioritize and go overboard with trying to respond to everything all the time, but I find they go overboard with everything else in life also.
I do just fine, but business now expects some employees to respond 7 by 24 hours, what happened to work/life balance? and the concept that most big business in America will off-shore you at a moments notice to save money. I just wish I could be retired now and not wait until I am 66 or older.
My last job, I often got 21% of my base salary in profit sharing yearly and I only worked a 7.75 hour day. As I began to see the writing on the wall over the years, with technology people in managerial positions never got away from their job nights and weekends. I had a best friend from college who worked like this: nights, weekends, took only brief vacations yearly, all in an attempt to climb that ladder. Well, he got sick and died at 35. That was the point I began to question the need to strive this hard in an attempt to afford more and more stuff (otherwise, what are you really working that hard for?). I eventually decided that I'd rather be comfortable and have a life than being on call 24/7 and no life.
Believe it or not, we did have careers, an economy, and successful companies prior to cell phones. All this does is confuse priorities. When everything is critical, then nothing is critical.
I once worked for a guy who told me, "This task is your number one priority."
An hour later he came in and gave me another "number one priority" job.
When I asked him which one was the true number one priority he told me, "They're both your number one priority."
I don't own a cell phone, I won't own a cell phone. I don't check work e-mails at home either. There is always tomorrow. This immediate need for information and contact just bewilders me. Most everything in this world can wait. Relax there is always a next workday.
You took the words right out of my mouth, Maine.
I don't own a cell phone either. Its the best feeling in the world to know when I leave the office, NO ONE can find me.
I don't own a cell phone either. I know a couple of retired people who still get phone calls from "work", and this is months later. I rely on people speaking eye to eye, and if that doesn't work for them, go talk to someone else. If the house is burning down and a phone is handy, I'll call the fire department. If I'm not at the house burning down, someone else can call the fire department. Just because you have a cell phone, doesn't qualify you to be a fireman.
The only difference now is that everyone expects constant, unsustainable growth.
"a third of people say they feel anxious when they can’t check their work email or voicemail for an “extended” period of time."
That sounds like a obsessive addiction, an illness that is not healthy.
Exactly. This syndrome should be in the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
rick, truer words were never spoken.
With companies like Yahoo doing away with telecommuting, I wouldn't be surprised to hear of workers starting to leave work (and cell phones) in the office and only being available to work, while in the the office, during office hours.
sradliff, unfortunately this will never be the case. The reason? In every corporate industry there is always a collection of work-a-holics that set the bar for everyone else. They work weeknights, weekends, and make sure everyone sees them sending emails at 2 am on a Friday night and 9:30 pm on a Tuesday night. These people are typically always promoted to some level of management where they continue their obsessive connection to work, thus giving the impression that they expect the same from their direct reports. They require cell phones but never directly say "I expect you to be ready all the time", they imply it by being ready all the time themselves.
And the reward for this type of behavior is visible - be responsive 24/7 without being asked, and you too can be promoted!
Our company gives us iPhones, but when I get home after a long commute, it's in the drawer until I get to work the next day. Same for the weekends. I just ignore it. I have to, or I'd go insane (I've been there before!).
This whole thing is just another way corporations are getting blood from a turnip to increase their EPS and do more work with less people. If they can have you and I working 16-18 hours per day and weekends thanks to iPhones and iPads, as well as requiring in-office presence M-F, 8-5, then they can convince themselves that they're getting 2-3 workers in one and simply lay off the rest - cutting salaries and beefing up their bottom line.
I'm just waiting for the day when a company opens a "campus" with living quarters and the whole shebang - much like many Chinese companies do - offering food, living, entertainment, and expecting you to be 100% on call while living on this campus - just to get maximum output from their people. In other words, it's only a matter of time before companies literally OWN their workers here in the USA.
Yahoo is only doing away with working from home lifestyle. Employees will have to come to the office, but they will also have to be electronically connected and available during non office hours, and will respond just to keep up. The techies will be working for 50-60 hrs per week ( and on call) for 40 hrs of pay. This erosion in pay will bring their salary levels back down competitive to techies in India, China, and where ever. This equilibrium is what the phrase "world economy" is all about.
TheDude,
I think I'd qualify as one of those workaholic types you mentioned, but I largely do it because I enjoy work and I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of seeing the company succeed and solving clients problems. When I'm managing people and asking them to work hard on a project, I'm also very conscientious about trying to show that I'm also working as hard or harder than I'm asking them to do.
I do have a good life outside work, but I also see nothing wrong with working hard and taking a few minutes several times a day and at night to check emails (and respond if needed). One thing I've found is clients are very happy to get a quick "I saw your email and I'll get back to you Monday morning" email on the weekend. It doesn't solve their problem any faster, but it does make them think you care...and happy clients pay better (which means more raises/hires for everyone at the company).
Increased revenue may become retained earnings or larger dividends. There is no assurance that higher revenue will lead to bonuses nor raises.
Smartphones are not the cause, people not setting boundaries is the cause. The saying "Give someone an inch..." is especially true here. If you set the precedence with your company and boss that you are going to be available 24/7 then they will expect it. AND, if everyone would set those same boundaries, then just maybe the tide of work-work balance instead of work-life balance can be turned. It doesn't matter how "flexible" your employer is (letting you work from home, leave for appointments without taking PTO, etc), if you cannot unplug yourself then your family and relationships suffer from your lack of their full attention.
Do you live to work or work to live? If you are answering email, "G-chatting", or doing work while not on the clock, I'd say you've got your priorities mixed up! Even salaried employees need time to decompress and destress without worrying about their boss "watching over their shoulder". We wonder why Americans are less healthy, over stressed, and don't get enough sleep. Well, this is one of the contributing factors!
It's actually more a case of "working so you can live." Recent studies have shown that unemployment is not good for your health, either.
It depends what you do for a living, too. In the tech world, most folks don't punch a clock any longer, so you're never really off the so-called-clock.
Don't own a, "smart" phone. Work life balance is where it is at.
Our company's definition of work-life balance:
If you're working, your life is balanced.
I never check emails or do work in the evenings or on weekends, and certainly not on vacations. I think all these people that think they have to be constantly connected are just trying to make themselves feel more important than they are. Turn the phone off, turn the laptop off and learn to enjoy life. It's the only one you'll ever have.
A lot of people are just trying to keep up with the Jones' in their office. Salesmen of all kinds rely on being available for their commissions and if they miss a sale because they turned their phone off then they could have trouble eating that month - weekends or not. For other jobs there is competition for recognition, bonuses, salary, and if the guy at the end of the hall is going the extra mile then you have to as well - or quit. That's not usually an option these days. It's not so much about people lording their smartphones over others and trying to look important. It is about job security.
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on mine. My work phone goes off at 4 pm sharp and if you want me to leave it on then pay up.
Banaschar I used to have that same saying posted in my cubicle. Just the "lack of planning" part. It's so true
and if you really tell some one that, you are labeled as unsupportive and a non-team.
If we are unable to find work/life balance, the life side will end quicker than we anticipated. Companies should take note. When everyone has shorter life due to no balance of work and life, productivity will go down. I think we all should make an effort to be not quite so productive, because if we do not, we may never see a raise again.
Ain't that the truth. Started with the cell phone so they can contact you but the smartphone makes you truly available.
If your job doesn't require to be available by smartphone then you really don't have an important job.
If your company requires you to be available by smartphone, then you really should look for another job with a different company, unless you are being paid for your availability, which is usually not the case. Just tell them you were in a cell phone dead zone, so you could not make or receive calls. The day has yet to come when a company can tell employees where they can or cannot be during their off hours. The simple-minded managers who implement these stupid policies are indicative of a real lack of management intellectual strength and imagination, thus dooming the company to eventual failure. I never answered my cell phone on off hours, unless I was the paid on-call person for that week. Notice I said "paid", and not "slavishly devoted and fearful".
nav-399-Your most important task is as a parent and a spouse, and you get very few chances to do it correctly. If your job could truly be done remotely, then it could be done from China or India. Your employer does not consider you to be nearly as important your kids and family. Trust me on this one.
I'd say it started earlier than that, when the beeper became the must-have for the work-connected employee. I think the early cell phones (the ones like bricks) became available about the same time but the prices were astronomical. Beepers on the other hand were as cheap as a cell phone is today. Every well connected executive, manager, supervisor, social butterfly and drug dealer had a beeper! You got the beep, you ran for the nearest phone. Of course, when cell phone prices dropped to an affordable level, beepers quickly disappeared - it cut out the middleman (beeper) and got you on the phone quicker!
Don't have a cellphone, don't want a cellphone and am a hundred times happier than my "hip" friends and colleagues who are texting their lives away....
I was keeping a cheap prepaid cell phone for a couple of years but have recently let it go. Even with the cheapest prepaid minutes I could get it was still $12/month and then minutes didn't carry over. Often I'd go a month or two without making a call. Usually when I did want to make one the cell phone battery would be dead (I've been unlucky enough to have several cell phones that had poor battery life). I figure I was giving the phone company at least $144/year and maybe using less than an hour for the whole year. I like having one for emergencies but this really wasn't worth it. Also, for 25 years I had jobs that required me to work on the phone a lot during the day. Slowly, over the years I got so tired of talking to people on the phones at work that the last thing I wanted to do was to come home and talk to people. I learned how to ignore a ringing phone and just didn't care to be connected 24/7. It's nice to have quiet time to myself!
Not only is it expected to work 24/7, the flip side is that often your friends and family expect personal time 24/7. I can't tell you how many fights I have had because i didn't answer a personal email or respond immediately to a personal phone call while at work.
No one believes you when you say you were in a meeting, in your car, in the subway, etc. Everyone assumes they are being ignored and they immediately take it personally. If its work - then you aren't committed to your job. If it's personal - then you are a terrible husband or friend.
Sorry everyone, just because I live and breath and have a smartphone doesn't mean you can have access to my brain 24/7.
Sorry Martha. This article is about 5-10 years past due.
"Knowing that the boss is burning the midnight oil, for instance, can make employees feel obligated to do the same. Wagner said it wasn’t uncommon for his company’s president, with whom he works closely, to send him multiple emails on Sunday nights."
Meanwhile, the boss is making way more than the underling. Corporations and management are a joke. They expect all for nothing. There is no Capitalism for the employees. I spoke with a girl who works for a large retail chain. The clerks are constantly harassed to make sales numbers and the manager keeps track of their sales. The unbelievable part of it all is that she works part-time, makes about $8.00/hr and gets no commission for goals reached. What a joke when people praise the Capitalism we have here in the US. Just keeping a part-time job should not be THE ONLY incentive to make sales numbers - it never used to be this way.
I sincerely doubt that any of this is accomplishing anything productive, except motivating the best people to quit.
I wish I HAD a smartphone. Where I live, I don't get cell service at my house so I cannot justify the expense. I sell online. Having a smartphone would allow me to answer customer inquiries during all of my waking hours. As it is, there are internet filters at my day job and I can only provide customer service to my online customers in the evenings and on weekends. But I can't justify paying full price for a part-time smartphone in addition to paying $65 a month for a basic land line. I'd have to ditch the land line first. You guys don't realize how lucky you are.
Remember the 1960's cartoon The Jetsons? George Jetson who worked for Spacely Sprockets said "these 3 hr workdays are killing me".
All those 21st century labor saving technologies was supposed to give people more lesiure time. Just the opposite happened.
I guess if you have the tools to get more work done, you'll be given that much more work to do and then some.
Precisely. All the benefits of these technological advancements that increase productivity are going almost entirely to the owners of capital rather than being shared with labor. I once read a study that said if we as a society were willing to live just like we did in the 1950s (standard of living wise) that with the gains in productivity since then we'd each only have to work 20 hrs a week. Basically the rich are richer because all the gains went directly to their bank accounts.
Unless we as a society can find a way to share these productivity gains equitably across the entire labor base nothing will change and eventually the masses will enter a state of near slavery in the generations to come.
Unchecked population growth + Labor saving tech (automation) + Finite resources + Capitalism = train wreck.
I believe it was G. B. Shaw who once, long ago, pointed out that the labor-saving contrivance usually works its owner to death...
Honey, it isn't the smartphone that started this. The leash started eons ago with the telephone, then progressed to pagers, connectivity from home, cellphones, IM, smartphones...younger people who grew up with the constant availability of cellphones expect to be available 7X24 when they are on the job. Us old dinosaurs know how to shut the cellphone off or ignore it. We're comfortable being out of touch and waiting for answer.
At work, if you are the only person who knows how to fix a problem, if it is THAT critical, you need to train a backup, and quickly.
Old news been going on for years and companies expect it with no compensation for employee typically. They would want you available 24/7 all year round. Labor laws state and federal again poor enforcement who provides the money its all leverage.
Basically rip offs take full advantage of there employees
Poor reporting once again and old news and our laws once again not enforced
I may answer an email or 2 on the weekends but I value my time off and my blackberry if OFF except when I turn it on to check which is about twice Saturday and twice Sunday. I learned that once you start responding to emails more and more are sent since they reached another fool like themselves.
My wife is constantly on her laptop or iphone doing work with her job, I think she likes it but if that was me she would be complaining I'm sure. Either way this is the world we have created and it's only going to get worse, people are going to get divorced, miss important events in their lives, ruin their vacations and more because they must be in contact at all times.
I work for a large nationwide engineering firm and they used to expect ALL salaried employees to be available on their phones all the time. I leave for work at 6am every morning and get home a little after 5pm. I check my phone and email one time after dinner for late information from the day and for any of our west coast offices and that is it! If almost 12 hours of constant contact isn't enough then there will never be enough.
Time management and turning off work is very important to your life. Your family, friends, pets and your personal health all hang in that balance. Ask yourself do you "Live to Work" or "Work to Live"......if it's not the second one you should think about it.
Congratulations, I feel the same way. My weekends belong to me, if I get an email or 2 I will take my time answering it but I will answer it. I turn my blackberry off and enjoy my time, I don't sit around waiting for my job to email me on the weekends. I am sorry but that is just pathetic to me bring your job everywhere you go, I'm sorry but that is just me.
how to deal with this problem - get another job. when it's your time to go your not going to give a @!$%# about 2AM emails and phone calls, you're going to wish you had that time back for actual life.
No company owns me. I call the shots. I dictate my pay. I decide when I have had enough. I decide how much vacation I get. When I leave the office, I don't think about work at all. I don't carry a cellphone with me. And I believe you cannot be as productive as you can be working from home. Sounds pretty radical, doesn't it?
You must be self-emlpoyed. otherwise jobseeker is always what you will be .
Never owned a business in my life. But I do seek jobs all the time, each time getting a raise from the previous one. I play hardball. Put the resume on the internet and wait for a call if there is an interest. The first question is always how much do you want? I give them a number and we negotiate. If I get tired of the job or if someone pisses me off, I leave. Have been doing that ever since I graduated. It's worked out great, financially and freedom to do what I want.
If I was self-employed, I would be working 24/7.
Whenever I see articles like this it reminds me of that old saying: "Nobody on their deathbed has ever said 'I wish I had worked more'"...