With the prevalence of smartphones and social media in our society today, and given the release of bigger, better (in principle) iPhones in recent weeks, I have been chatting to various friends and colleagues about the use of these devices in the workplace - with a particular focus on business meetings.
Although smartphone etiquette seem patently obvious to me, it appears that there is much confusion about what is correct and what is not, no doubt due to the fact that there actually is no unified set of guidelines never mind actual rules for either social media or smartphone use. Things have moved incredibly fast in communication technology, and we are more or less all in a position now to be bombarded with communications and information at every minute of the day - even when at work, and even when in meetings with other people. Quite when or where people felt that all of this streaming communication became equally important as work, at work, is not obvious to me.
One reason why there is confusion or lack of clarity in various organizations is that the CEO may very well (typically?) be anything but au fait with the latest trends and technologies, and the fashion in which younger employees choose to use their devices becomes almost a way of life for the entire team. In a business form of role reversal, it somehow became the kids teaching the parents what was appropriate and the sheep should all follow them. Right? How about no?!
The parent and kid analogy is actually quite a relevant one because how many parents have had to fight with their kids over the use of their smartphones at the dinner table? The kids get told that they can put it down for an hour while the family eats and talks, and their world won't fall apart in the meantime - so put it down or turn it off. It all would make sense, if that is how their parents behaved at similar sit-downs at work.
The sad thing is that the parents (typically?) don't adhere to their own rules, when it comes to the workplace. They scream at their kids to put the bloody thing down, but then at work stride purposefully into meetings clutching their smartphones as if the world may stop turning at any moment, and/or, the world outside the meeting relies on them so heavily that if they do not communicate with it then that might be the reason that the globe stops revolving!
There simply seems to be a lack of education and/or sophistication in how people behave with their smartphones when it comes to business. The older generation did not grow up with such devices, and there are no rules for using them, so it has become a bit of a free-for-all. After talking to various levels of personnel in various different areas of business, four main classifications of smartphone abuse at work were the most commonly observed, and they fall into the following groups that I categorise as:
- The busy bee - this might well be the CEO or team leader who does shoulder a higher level load than many, and who feels that they need to be online at all times. While it can well be the case for an outfit that has physical operations on which the business depends, or products out there in the marketplace that are at critical stages of roll out, in most cases a supposedly "lost" hour in a meeting will change absolutely nothing. I might vouchsafe that what in fact is being lost is that hour interacting with team members - an essential component of mutual respect between management and subordinates. But at the very least, if your face is going to be buried in the phone for a solid hour, the phone should be silenced, so as to not distract anyone from the purpose of the meeting - and if that is not acceptable, because there are critical things to attend to - the answer is simple: stay out of the meeting if the phone is more important than the content of the meeting on that day! It is much more considerate and polite to do so, when your presence will be nothing more than distraction. If you really are (and it is entirely possible) that busy, then stay out of meetings better handled by other management, and get on with your own demanding business.
- The image builder - there is some crossover with the novice in this department, in that the image builder will abuse the phone in ways that can be typical of a novice, but the difference is that the image builder does it consciously with intent. Like the busy bee, they insist on bringing the smartphone into each and every meeting and displaying it on the table proudly, but refuse to ever silence its annoying/impolite clanging. In some cases, because it is about image and not content, the image creator's phone misbehaves simply because its owner doesn't actually know how to change the default settings! However, one major difference between the busy bee and the image creator is that the former does pick it up and read each incoming communique and often types replies, while the latter simply leaves it ringing incessantly for all to either marvel at ("Oh my God, he gets so many texts and emails, he must be way busier than I thought!") or roll their eyes at ("God, can you just turn the bloody ringer off at least?!"). I could come up with various hypotheses as to why such types get a thrill out of a phone apparently getting a message every 73 seconds, yet never one that merits actual reading of it - but I think it's better left unsaid, or left to each reader's own imagination! It goes without saying that your common-or-garden image builder also will often have the hottest new phone available, but rarely uses it to even 5-10% of its capability. It's a bit like forgoing the SUV and getting into the cockpit of an F-35 Raptor for the daily commute to work! Prior to the evolution of smartphones, the other way the classical image builder used to operate was to routinely (I mean, like, 99.99% of the time) show up late for meetings. The implicit message being that unlike everyone else, I am so overloaded and every minute of my time is precious, therefore I will always be last to arrive at meetings. Uh-huh.
- The novice - a bit like service providers themselves, we all get a grace period when we first enter the smartphone world. Many providers will forgive or reduce a large roaming bill when you first run into that particular problem, or if you didn't realize that texting to the USA was not included, they will adjust your first bill, and so on. Ditto for smartphone abuse in meetings for the novice, of any age. These days the true novices are rarely young, because the young eat these devices up at a rate of a new model every 9-12 months! However, one can quite routinely see an aging, greying executive who might be a seasoned professional but whose organisation has finally forced the dreaded iPhone on them, and here they are in middle-age desperately trying to catch up and keep up. Some of the older novices are very prone to smartphone abuse, having just caught up to 2014 after many years of refusing to jump onto the bandwagon, and now use it the way they see their kids use it at home. However, the critical thing that must happen is that the novice has to be told early on (how) to either silence the bloody thing or don't ever bring it into a meeting again. This is neither the high school cafeteria nor the Facebook locker room - it is a business.
- The kid - this is usually the intern or most junior person in the organization, but, wait for it, in direct correlation, he/she could be the one who is most on top of all of the latest devices, apps, and social media trends. Quite often this allows them a kind of smartphone supremacy, and we all must do our best to copy their smartphone ways, right? Nope. While they might get away with smartphone fixation even at the dinner table at home, their work parents need to nip it in the bud from day two, and do them a huge favour by refusing to let them dictate their habits onto an entire workplace. One friend did tell me about an intern who would let the phone buzz incessantly on the boardroom table, even during presentations by renowned senior scientists, and to me that represents just about the greatest height (i.e. low) of arrogant rudeness, at worst, or simply a clear lack of class and manners, at best. If you are a boss and you let this go, well, you are going to get just what you are asking for - a room full of people mistakenly thinking that they have a right to be aware of every single communication that arrives at work, even if that's a selfie of one of their Facebook friends in a wet T-shirt. There is no intern or junior employee (barely in their twenties) who is important enough to justify endless buzzing on a table. One wouldn't let them cut in and routinely interrupt senior personnel having a discussion at a level beyond their experience, so why would it be tolerable for their smartphone?
It all comes down to common sense and good manners, and maybe this is just a personal opinion but I regularly feel that good manners not only went out of fashion but actually blew right out of the window in recent human evolution over the last decade or two. However, while there is little doubt that social media and smartphones have ironically made us more anti-social in public, people need to be reminded that this is not acceptable in the workplace. A good general rule for any team meeting is that all phones must have their ringers turned off and vibration mode should only be acceptable in one's pocket, or, if this just doesn't work - then no phones should come into meetings at all, unless they are being solely used to take notes. Anyone crying that this is an outrage should be reminded why we call it "work", and forced back down out of their fantasy land of self-importance, with their feet (and phone!) firmly planted on cold ground with a solid thump.
I totally understand the need to have a phone on hand if the wife is pregnant, or the husband is in hospital, or the kids have a huge exam or you are waiting for news of a multi-million dollar deal - but how many days a year is this the case for most people? Trust me, (tearfully) leaving the smartphone on the desk and going into meetings unburdened can actually be a very liberating experience; it even serves to remind us of how much personal freedom we have lost by clinging to these devices! And who knows, by unchaining our wrist from the phone, we may even be more appreciated by clients and colleagues alike, for giving them our undivided attention - now that would be something we can call progress!
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