Employers in Australia are tired with extreme usage of mobile phones in the workplace and say there is ‘no excuse’ to use them in the office.
And, some business owners are starting to take action.
It comes after Victoria moved to ban mobile phones in schools by 2020, as teachers and principals are fed up and want to make students’ attentive in the classroom.
Business owner and president of the Brisbane Junior Chamber of Commerce Nathan Schokker has said that there have been more businesses making formal policies against phone usage at work, in the last 12 months.
‘I’d say 50 percent are taking action, whether that’s talking to their team or creating a policy and trying to be on the front foot,’ he told the Courier Mail.
‘Most people try to take a ‘softly softly’ approach and raise it with their teams and say “let’s cut down phone use”, then it just progressively increases in severity so memos go around the business saying “we are going to start policing this”, then they have no place to go but to create a policy so it’s official and there is no excuse.
Mr. Schokker said that it was the issue related to the younger generation mostly but it has now spread in adults too.
‘People don’t realize how long they can spend on their phone on social media or playing a game or texting people,’ he said.
Mr. Schokker has implemented the ban at Talio, his property service, and maintenance business.
Mobile phones should be ban in work-place due to high-risk work environments such as factories, with supermarkets and fast food businesses traditionally sticking to a no phone policy.
In the UK, there have been employers physically taking their devices from employees during work hours.
Gerard O’Shaughnessy, who runs a firm in West Yorkshire, recently advertised a job that required no ‘phone addicts.’
‘We’ve had girls have complete meltdowns when they’ve come to work and been told they need to put their phone in a box.
‘Others have said it’s almost breaching their human rights, their right to be connected to their phone, it’s almost like separation anxiety.’