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Cutting The Wire

Introduction

Once carried only by important business people and computer geeks, mobile devices such as the cell phone, email handheld, and notebook computer are permeating every level of the corporate hierarchy. Employees demand them to juggle their increasingly complex family and business arrangements, while employers use the devices to retain old employees, recruit new ones, cut costs, and increase productivity. What employers and employees may not recognize is that their increasing dependency on these mobile devices is endangering not only family structures but employee health. However, if attention is paid to the implementation and evolution of mobile devices in the workplace, then both employers and employees can benefit.

Mobile devices, their technology, and uses

Cell phones

Dr. Martin Cooper made the first cellular telephone call in April 1973 (Bellis, web). Thirty years later cell phones have become ubiquitous in North America.

From the embedded software which runs on every phone, allowing users to store phone numbers, play games, and keep track of appointments to the software required to track cell phone across multiple cells there is a lot of computer science at work in what seems to be such a small package. In fact, "On a "complexity per cubic inch" scale, cell phones are some of the most intricate devices people play with on a daily basis" (Brian, Tyson, web).

With widespread cellular coverage, people are now more accessible than ever before. In terms of work, cell phones enable employers to get in touch with their employees anywhere and at anytime. As an increasing number of businesses do business twenty four hours a day, both on the web and around the world, it is vital for employees to be on call.

Email handhelds

Research In Motion pioneered the concept of using an always-on handheld device to send and receive email. While their BlackBerry unit remains popular with over 14,400 corporations, a number of competing products now exist such as the Handspring Treo and the T-Mobile Sidekick.

These devices employ radio technology very similar to that of cell phones except the data in this case is email, not digitized voice. In addition to the software embedded in the device and application software which runs on the device, email handhelds also require complex software that operates behind the scenes to push emails from a user's inbox to their portable handheld device.

Email handhelds allow employees who travel extensively to keep in touch with their email as if they were in the office, without having to carry around a notebook and a variety of cords and cables. In addition to allowing employees to have instant access to their email, email handhelds also enable a variety of other business functions. For instance, realtors can use software developed by Emerest Mobile to search MLS property listings, receive notifications of listings, and receive notification of new leads, all in real time outside of the office.

Notebook Computers

Notebook computers have come a long way from the first clamshell portable, the GRiD Compass 1100, designed for NASA over twenty years ago. The original GRiD Compass cost $9000 and had only 256KB of memory (Hrothgar, web). Today notebook computers are just as powerful as their desktop counterparts, the lightest ones weigh only a few pounds, and are affordable (even for university students).

Even a simple notebook computer like the GRiD requires a complex operating system and today's notebook computers are no exception.

Notebook computers enable employees to easily take work not only home from the office, but on the road. While employees have been able to use notebook computers on airplanes for some time now, Connexion by Boeing will allow air travelers to use wireless access to connect to the Internet in flight (Abreu, web).

Benefits

For families with both parents working highly demanding jobs it is increasingly difficult for them to manage both family and work responsibilities. By giving these employees mobile devices employers are enabling employees to manage both work and these increasingly complex family structures. The report, Living in the Eye of the Storm: Controlling the Maelstrom in Silicon Valley suggested that one strategy to facilitate sound logistics and enable families to be in contact is to build infrastructure through the development of a contact system through "the purchase of myriad devices, such as pagers, cell phones, voicemail, answering machines, portable computers and mobile devices, and digital assistants such as the Palm Pilot" (Darrah, English-Lueck, Freeman, web).

Employers can increase the flexibility of work arrangements allowing employees to spend more time with their families by further empowering employees with mobile devices that allow them to work at home,. Employees may now choose to work part of the day from home, or may even work several days a week, to the entire week from home. By telecommuting employees can now spend time previously spent commuting either with their family or working.

The study Canadian Families and the Internet conducted by Ipsos-Reid for the Royal Bank of Canada found that 72% of RBC telecommuters felt telecommuting allowed them to spend more time with their families. In addition to increasing family time, some employees regard telecommuting as 'an indirect raise'" (Valdiserri, web). This is confirmed by an EKOS study in 1998 that found that 33% of Canadians would choose to telecommute over a 10% raise (EKOS, web). Employees view telecommuting as an indirect raise "because the telecommuter has far greater control over his or her work environment, and his control results in immediate benefits" (Khazanchi, web). This results in not only higher employee morale but it also results in increased employee productivity. In fact, IBM Canada found "productivity improvements of up to 50%" with its telecommuting program (IVC, web).

Allowing employees to telecommute also increases a company's potential labour pool by allowing employees to hire outside of their traditional geographical area (Valdiserri, web). In addition, if a company does not have to relocate new hires they can save an estimated $80,000 per employee (Valdiserri, web). With fewer employees in the office on a daily basis companies can reduce the amount of office space and furnishings they require (Khazanchi, web). Under its telecommuting program Nortel believes they have saved $15 million on real estate per year and have reduced greenhouse gas pollutants by 40 million pounds (IVC, web).

Drawbacks

While there are many clear benefits to empowering employees with mobile devices there are also some drawbacks. For instance "one of the biggest complaints about cell phones is that they take people out of the moment, removing them from their physical surroundings" (Davies, McDonald, web). In the Call of the Wired, Ramesh Rao, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology believes, "we could develop new habits that reveal in a visible way our preoccupations and lack of attention to conversations and other goings-on. This could adversely impact how we relate to our environment and people, especially those that do not use wireless technologies quite as extensively" (Davies, McDonald, web).

While the fear of alienation is a real one, more troubling is when people are so pre-occupied with talking on the phone that it jeopardizes the safety of others. For instance a study by the New England Journal of Medicine found "the risk of a collision when using a cellular telephone was four times higher than the risk when a cellular telephone was not being used" (Redelmeier, Tibshirani, web).

Another problem with workers carrying always-on mobile devices outside of the office is that "as [workers] begin to respond to e-mail more frequently and with faster response times, users will increase the volume of their e-mail and feel greater pressure to respond quickly" (Gartenberg, web). As a result emails are shorter, terse, and poorly composed. Larry Larson of the UC San Diego Center for Wireless Communication believes that this technology "will lead to shallower but broader interaction". According to Alex Lightman, "in a tribal society, humans kept track of only about 150 people. The telephone increased our social network to about 250 people. With e-mail, we are now able to stay in touch with as many as 500 people" (Gartenberg, web). This confirms Sven Birkerts fear that "we are giving up on wisdom" and instead "are pledging instead to a faith in the web" (Birkerts, 82).

Increasingly, mobile devices such as cell phones and email handhelds are being seen as a wireless tether to the office. Employees are now effectively on call at all hours of the day. In addition to this, many secretarial positions are being eliminated as a result of computerization and many professionals have to assume the role of being their own secretary, thereby increasing their amount of work. In order to cope with this increased burden they are taking work home in an attempt to get ahead. Bringing work home changes "the segmentist nature of industrial work--work is at work, family is at home--is a hallmark of the past 80 years". Unfortunately a paper on Juggling Digital Devices at Work and Home In Silicon Valley found that "individuals were expected to police this boundary themselves, the workplace required the work to be done--how far people would be willing to go would be up to them" (English-Lueck, web). While many workers are protected by unions who fight to maintain the segregation of work and home life many professionals do not enjoy such protection.

Exacerbating the problem of work-home blurring is the near ubiquity of cell phones. It is now expected that we can reach anyone, anywhere, at anytime. While there are many benefits to unfettered access "the potential disruptions to work and concentration may outweigh the benefits" (Sherry, Salvador, web). While many technologies, such as call screening, and email filtering exist to allow individuals to be "in touch" on their own terms these technologies are rigid and imperfect (Sherry, Salvador, web). In fact, Alex Lightman author of "Brave New Unwired World" believes that employees will not even be able to escape work on vacation, "anybody who says that 'You can't reach me on vacation' will become irrelevant" (Davies, McDonald, web).

While employees may feel tethered to work, not only at home but also on vacation, they can also "feel cut off from the rich potential for interactions in their office environment" (Sherry, Salvador, web). Most troubling is that this may impact their eligibility for promotion since if an employee is a full time telecommuter they are missing out on rich office interactions (IVC, web).

The evolution of mobile devices

The future will bring lighter, smaller and faster mobile devices. The future will also bring geo-positioning to today's popular mobile devices. While serving many practical functions such as enabling 911 operators the ability to locate a mobile phone, the downside is employers may be able to track the whereabouts of their mobile devices. This means that they will be able to track the whereabouts of their employees, raising a number of privacy related concerns. However, Paul Jacobs of wireless giant Qualcomm insists "the company is working diligently to guard against the Big Brother scenarios some envision" (Davies, McDonald, web). The easiest way to resolve this problem is to enable not just employers, but users, of mobile devices to selectively disable wireless tracking.

More important than the technological advancements in mobile technologies, is the resolution of their social implications. For instance employers must establish guidelines that put the safety of their employees before business issues. This means mandating that cell phones and email handhelds are not to be used while driving as well as educating employees in proper mobile device etiquette.

Employers must also help employees establish a boundary between work and home life. They must ensure that the technology they deploy enables employees to unplug and relax with family friends. They must also realize that they cannot expect their employees to be effectively on call twenty four hours a day. They need to respect that employees need to segregate work from home life to prevent work-home blurring.

Employers need to also pro-actively react to issues such as work isolation. While it may not be possible for an employee who telecommutes to visit their employer because of either a disability or a demanding family situation, employers must then visit their employers.

Conclusion

Mobile devices are more than just fancy tech toys for geeks; they are in fact tools which enable an increasing number of workers to redefine their relationship with the office. Employees can now cut the ties from their office, enabling them to spend less time commuting and more time either playing or working. The increased autonomy derived from working at home not only makes the employee feel better but actually results in a more productive worker. While there are drawbacks such as safety concerns with cell homes and work-home blurring the benefits outweigh these concerns. None-the-less these concerns must be addressed both by the technologists creating the tools and the employers deploying them. When all parties work together to maximize both productivity and the physical and mental well being of employees, everyone will benefit.

References

Abreu, E. (2003). PluggedIn: Web Access in the Clouds http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&;storyID=2234359

Bellis, M. Selling the Cell Phone http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa070899.htm

Brian, M., Tyson, J.How Cell Phones Work http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone.htm

Canadians and Telework, http://www.ekos.ca/admin/press_releases/nov98.pdf

Canadian Studies, http://www.ivc.ca/studies/canadianstudies.htm

Canadian Families and the Internet. http://www.ivc.ca/studies/20020123CanFam_Full_Report-E.pdf

Darrah, C. N., English-Lueck, J. A., Freeman, J. M. (2000). Living in the Eye of the Storm: Controlling the Maelstrom in Silicon Valley http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/anthropology/svcp/SVCPmael.html

Davies, J. McDonald, J. (2002). The Call of the Wired. http://alumni.ucsd.edu/headline/wi03/010203_wired.htm

Hrothergar, GRiD Compass 1101 http://www.total.net/~hrothgar/museum/Compass/

Emerest Mobile http://www.emerest.com/

English-Lueck, J. (1997). Juggling Digital Devices at Work and Home in Silicon Valley. http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/anthropology/svcp/SVCPjugg.html

InnoVisions Canada http://ivc.ca

Khazanchi, D. Telecommuting: Home sweet, Work? http://www.isqa.unomaha.edu/dkhazanchi/research/scanners/telecommuting.htm

McKay, I. The First Laptop? http://www.maineantiquedigest.com/articles/l030896.htm

Mullen, M. (2002). Telecommuting: Where is My Office? http://uashome.alaska.edu/~jfjfa/PADM%20612%20Lit%20Reviews/Mullen.htm

Redelmeier, D., Tibshirani, R. (1997). Association between Cellular-Telephone Calls and Motor Vehicle Collisions http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/336/7/453

Sherry, J., Salvador, T. (2001) Running and grimacing: the struggle for balance in mobile work. ftp://download.intel.com/labs/productivity/integratedcommunications/download/run_grimace.pdf

Valdiserri, S. (1998). Implications of the Remote Work Environment on Organizations and Employees http://www.it.nwu.edu/metrochicago/think6.htm