Know when to switch off

PR executive Angela Clark is contactable via her mobile phone at any hour and once had a work call at 5am on New Year's Day for a 'client incident'.

"In my job it's expected that I will be on call [24/7] and I am comfortable with being that contactable, but you do need to agree on the right mechanisms," says Clark.

Clark says she used to have a Blackberry email device as well as a voice-only mobile phone, but found people would take advantage of that.

"[Colleagues] would email me at 8pm saying 'could you ring this person urgently'. We had to develop a protocol that said: if you need me urgently, pick up the phone and talk to me. Because when they'd sent an email they'd think the job was done whereas it wasn't until I had read it and responded. The next day they would say 'well I emailed you, so it's not my responsibility'," says Clark.

Clark says the social intrusion of 'push email' devices such as the Blackberry can be irritating.

"I don't mind getting an urgent call but a lot of emails are for non-urgent things and you'll be out at dinner and people will be checking their Blackberries at the table," she says.

Talk to telecommunications providers and you will hear that telephony today is about calling people, not places - cue images of happy staff taking voice and video calls and satisfied customers placing new orders because they have a supplier that's human and contactable.

This vision is not all marketing spin. Modern IP telephony systems offer one view of extensions and mobile devices across an organisation (including national and international branches), meaning anyone in the organisation with access to the system can see who is where, doing what, in what ways they can be contacted, and on what type of device.

This delivers administration and productivity benefits as well as ensuring customers can contact key people, or at least leave them messages and be sure of a response. It can also be highly convenient for employees - provided they have the confidence and control to know when to switch off a mobile device, or if they are genuinely not bothered by being 'always on'.

Like many young people, Auckland communications specialist Rachael Joel says she falls into the latter category.

"It's nice getting messages and knowing that clients can contact me. I am one of those people that if I don't get a phone call or text message all day I feel [disappointed.]," says Joel.

However, she says her workplace has decided video calling is "more of a fun idea than a good idea" and it's important that people can opt to take a video call as a voice call.

"We decided that customers didn't need to know we were in the dairy buying the paper," says Joel.

While some employees go as far as putting their available hours in brackets beside their mobile phone number on business cards, Joel says this often isn't necessary - people with desk phones tend to call her landline; people with mobiles call her mobile from their mobile. Some people leave a message on the landline, some on the mobile; and some leave messages on both devices.

"There is nothing about any of this that's stressful; I feel that if you don't want to be reached, you just turn your mobile phone off," says Joel.

However, others find that difficult. Among them are parents who keep a mobile on at all times in case of a 'teen emergency' and older generations who struggle to knock off work mentally when there's a potential line to work sitting in their pocket or handbag waiting to go off.

"I feel like I am sitting on a time bomb. Will the phone ring when the kids are fighting? Will I ignore it because I need to and then find out its urgent? I once turned my phone off and the next day my boss said 'you don't have to have your phone on, but I did try to reach you on it'. I felt instant guilt," says one working mother.

Is being able to be reached at all hours a modern day expectation of both employers and customers? No way, says Kursten Shalfoon, head of business products and services for Vodafone.

Shalfoon says the company has 1400 staff; almost all have a mobile device and most are without desk phones. However, he says this does not mean Vodafone expects its people to be contactable 24/7 (except those paid to be on call), nor is this what customers expect.

"In theory we are more contactable, but the real benefit is if customers have to leave a message, they know we will get it. I was out of the office for Thursday and Friday last week; if I had a desk phone, customers would have left messages on that which I wouldn't have picked up till Monday," says Shalfoon.

Mobile phones can also be set up with different ring tones for work and personal calls so that their owners can choose whether or not to take the call. Shalfoon says allowing people with mobile phones to work flexibly is also important - Vodafone's work with its parent in Britain results in calls to the mobile phones of New Zealand staff in the evening, but these people go to work later the next day.

It's also important for a mobile device owner to manage the messages they leave on the device so that if the device is off, each caller knows exactly when and how they will be responded to. People concerned about becoming a slave to a mobile device should set expectations around how and when they want to be contacted and communicate these to work colleagues and customers up front, says Shalfoon.

Katherine East of Telecom says many of its 6000 staff use their mobile phones for personal as well as business use and so choose to keep their phones on outside work hours.

"Because of this Telecom does not use any formal policies to enforce staff to turn their mobiles [on or off] outside business hours," says East. Telecom also argues the provision of mobile phones and smart email devices provides people with the flexibility to do their work when it works best for them - and that this assists stress levels and general balance.

"We see an increasing uptake of remote working technologies by businesses that recognise if staff can choose when and where they work, they become both more productive," says East.

On January 8, blogger Adam had this to say about the effect of 24/7 mobile phone contact: "There is always someone who will do a study that demonstrates that this technology is having an adverse effect on family/society/whatever. Ask any 12-year-old if they are confused or "floating" because there is too much technology and they will look at you like the old fart you are. My guidance: stay young, use the technology."

My guidance: just make sure you're the one in control.