OUMH 2203 ENGLISH FOR WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION

May 1, 2013

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OUMH2203

ENGLISH FOR WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION

MAY 2013
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May 1, 2013

The Advantages of Spending Too Much Time On Mobile Phone .

By: Noor Azilah bt Mohd Tah

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to identify the advantages of spending too much time on mobile
phone especially during working hours. I have conducted a survey on the company's workers
from various departments. The result indicates that everyone has at least one mobile phone
and they spend almost at least 6 hours a day on their phones for making and accepting calls,
texting and for social networking. However, there are many problems occur due to this matter
since everyone is so connected to the gadget. The problems can be in term of health, working
performance and ethical issues. In this report, I also include some possible actions that need
to be taken in order to solve this problem.

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TABLE OF CONTENT

Abstract

Bil Content Page

1.0 Introduction
1.1 Actions that need to be taken
1.1.1 Set up mobile phone policy
1.1.2 Put mobile phone in personal pigeon hole
1.0 4-7
1.1.3 Install firewall
1.1.4 Using company email
1.1.5 Campaign

2.0 Problems
2.1 Health Problems
2.2 Difficulty Monitoring Calls
2.0 8-13
2.3 Balance Between Work and Life
2.4 Harassment

3.0 The requirements for changes 14

4.0 Conclusion 15

5.0 References 16

6.0 Appendixes 17-20

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1.0 Introduction

What does it takes to be a good employee? Most employers and I believe you also agree that
good employees should display qualities such as dependability, punctuality, initiative, a
positive attitude toward the job, ability to get along well with others, flexibility, motivation,
organization, and an ability to perform assigned duties. Besides that, most individuals
preparing to enter the workforce would look at this list of expectations and find it reasonable.

However, I was wondering why most of our employees are unmotivated, disorganized, and
under-prepared. Some of them seem like lack of energy and unhealthy. I also got reports from
some employees that there are verbal fights among them. Thus, I have conducted simple
survey to investigate the causes of these matter. I found that the main cause is the use of
mobile phone. There are several actions that we can consider in order to solve this problem.

1.1 Actions that need to be taken

There are several actions that I would like to suggest in this report so that we could solve this
problem together as a team. The possible solutions are; set up mobile phone policy, keep the
mobile phone in personal pigeon hole, install firewall, use company email and launch a
campaign.

1.1.1 Set up mobile phone policy

The policy is used by employers to implement rules regarding the use of mobile phones in
the workplace. It sets forth restrictions on the use of mobile phone either it personal or
supplied by the company. It also governs employees' use of personal mobile phone to
minimize distractions in the workplace. This policy contains numerous standard provisions

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regarding mobile phone use and may be customized to reflect the employer's specific policies
and procedures.

Obviously, mobile phone can become a main distraction at work which causing major
problems with productivity. We always get lame excuses when the employees fail to submit
their project report for example on time. This is because almost three times in an hour they
use their mobile phone rather than to be focused on getting critical projects completed
accurately and on time.

However, by mandating a “no cell phone” policy may be too harsh. So as a beginning, we
should introduce this policy gradually. First, we should implement a personal cell phone
usage policy in writing. We write in detail so that everyone could have clear picture about the
policy. We have to consider certain situations like taking a personal call from the day care
about a sick child, talking to our personal doctor for appointment and other family and health
issues may be acceptable.

Nevertheless, spending 2 hours plus gossiping about somebody else should not get into the
acceptable list. This should include certain etiquette rules, such as turning the ringer off
during meetings or speaking softly to avoid disrupting others. If possible, get the employees
involved in creating the policy, perhaps we could have open discussion before setting up the
policy; explain why we are doing it and that we should tell them that we will make it fair and
reasonable to everyone and the most important is there will no double standard in the policy.
Usually there are only a small percentage of employees who truly abuse the system, so you’ll
find most employees will be on board with the policy and happy to provide input.

Then, we should post the policy throughout the office as a reminder. This is important
because the employees may claim that they have forgotten the rules if they break them.
Besides that, we need to review the policy with each employee and have them sign it. We

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have to keep the signing record so that we have written prove just in case they say that they
never know about the policy.

We have to provide some flexibility for those in unusual circumstances, such as an employee
with a sick child or with a recent death in the family. We need to be considerate for certain
cases that might affect health, children and family's issue. Other than that, is we have to
enforce the policy so everyone knows that we are serious about it. One of the best ways for
management to do this is by walking around. Since personal mobile phones are not connected
to the company’s network unless they try to use the company network, we really won’t know
if anyone is violating the policy unless there is someone from the management sector
physically walk around to check on them from time to time. The most important thing is by
'lead by example!' Don’t expect the employees to stay off their cell phones if we are
constantly texting and talking on us.

1.1.2 Put mobile phone in personal pigeon hole.

Employees should keep their mobile phone in their personal pigeon hole during their working
hours. They can use the mobile phone during their break and lunch hour so that they could
give full attentions towards their job. Most of the employees do not have self discipline when
dealing with personal mobile phone. Thus, by strictly asking them to leave the mobile phone
in personal pigeon hole or cabinet, they will learn to use their mobile phone only during their
break time. They will put their attention towards their requirement job.

1.1.3 Install firewall

Mobile phones, especially smart phones are mobile computers. They allow you to access the
internet and email, download applications and games and store personal contacts, photos and

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information. You need to protect and secure your phone just as you would your home or
mobile computer.

Firewalls can be used as a complement content and e-mail filtering solutions. It can also
monitor and record information for example we can trace the internet users plus it can be as a
value in determining who is accessing what type of information. By having firewalls, we can
automatically block most emails viruses and malware attacks. We can set up a password to
allow access for certain users to access certain information but prevent others from doing so.
Since more and more people use smart phone, it seems like firewalls can be a necessity for a
company to calculate usage of the internet, for example we can trace who spends most time
using the internet and how this affects the performance of the network.

1.1.4 Using company email

Almost everyone has an email. However, in workplace, it is most advisable to use only
company email for working purposes. Why is that so? First, employer could control the
content of the email. All the business affairs such as dealing with clients should only be held
through the company email. Besides that, employer can get into costly trouble over email
including private messages sent by the workers using company computers and network.

This makes it practical for the company to monitor everything that the workers do on their
work computer and at the same time the employer could know how their workers
communicate in particular. The best part is not only certain websites are being filtered out,
other web activity also will be protocol minutely. All the emails that the workers send and

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1.1.5 Campaign/ talk

Certain things in our life we need new refreshment. We need to be opened up to something
that beyond our knowledge. We may know the fact that mobile phone could have
disadvantages for our health and work life. However, how much we know? How serious the
issue is? Perhaps, we could invite someone from health experts to give a talk regarding the
topic mobile phone and how it can harm human's health. We could also call the employer to
give a talk on the importance of having mobile phone policy in the company so that all the
employees could have better understanding about the issue.

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2.0 Problems

According to Thomson and Bluvshtein (2008), employees use of technology is resulting in

greater rates of employee misuse, discipline of misuse, and ultimately litigation. Cell phone
communication, both in the form of personal calls and work-related calls, in the workplace
may disrupt an employee's work flow since it increases the perception that your employees
are always available to accept calls. An employee who has to stop work tasks throughout the
day may suffer from decreased productivity, which can cause the employee to miss deadlines
or put in extra hours to complete projects on time.

2.1 Health Problems

Based on the survey that I had conducted, most of the respondents agree that by being engage
with mobile phone for certain period of time, they might feel dizziness, ear ache and eye
problem. Some of them claimed that they also face insomnia due to over accessed to mobile
phone.

There has been endless discussion about the possibility of getting cancer, brain tumours and
other health problems by having too much exposure to the mobile phone radiation. In May
2011, experts classified cell phones as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in a report to the
World Health Organization (WHO). But less than five months later, another set of
researchers from the Danish Cancer Society declared that cell phone usage was in fact safe in
an online report published in BMJ. Country music superstar, Sheryl Crow blamed her brain
tumour diagnosis on her frequent cell phone use, but a new report by the Norwegian Expert
Committee determined that mobile phones and wireless network pose no health risk. Even
though there were many opinions and assumptions, we still have to try to reduce the risk.

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2.1.1Mobile Phones and Emotional Health:

We never thought how a mobile phone could give emotional impact towards the users.
Actually, we could get "nomophobia" which means the separation anxiety indicates a
psychological dependence on cell phones because the devices are a convenient way for us to
meet a basic human need. People tend to freak out when their mobile phones are missing.

2.1.2 Cell Phones and Eye Health:

The iPhone 5 is everyone's dream. It is more like a pocket-sized computer, you can listen to
music, review documents, in short everything is in there. Although it operates like a
computer, it has very small screen perhaps it is smaller than your hand. It's tiny fonts in bright
screens can make you peep and strain your views. This can affect your eyes and cause you to
get computer vision syndrome, an eye condition that can lead to dry eyes, difficulty focusing,
and even double vision.

2.2.3 Cell Phones and Chronic Pain:

Austin Wierschke, Two-times U.S. texting champion has the ability to type up to six
characters per second, however, health expert says that those fast fingers may lead to chronic
pain later on in life.

"When you're typing on a device with speed and repetition, you may cause pain and
inflammation," says Dr. Dean Fishman, chiropractic physician and owner/operator of the
Text Neck Institute in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He originally coined the phrase "text neck" to
describe the stress and pressure that can be triggered by mobile browsing and sending text
messages.

Dr. Fishman regularly sees patients with head, neck, shoulder, elbow, and hand pain –
including a 3-year-old girl who visited his office complaining of headaches. After doing an

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X-ray, he realized that she was spending hours bending her neck forward to play games and
practicing her alphabet on her mother's phone. "When you spend long hours in a forward
flexed position, it creates postural changes over time," he says. The pressure can lead to
arthritis condition of the bones and pressure on the spine.

Reduce the risk: Dr. Fishman conducted a study and found that simply holding the device
with proper posture can alleviate pain, and developed this Android App to help you use your
phone better.

2.1.4 Cell Phones and Germs:

Undeniable, our mobile phone is always be our best buddy. It follows us almost everywhere
and every time. Plus, I believe that more than a half of the employees bring their mobile
phone into the toilet. The question is how we ensure the mobile phone is clean enough? The
germs that might available on the mobile phone can cause several health diseases such as
spreading the E.coli bacteris which lead to diarrhea, urinary tract infections, and even kidney
failure, which can be deadly. Bacteria can also spread to your skin and cause breakouts.

2.2 Difficulty Monitoring Calls

Being an employee we should know what we should do and vice versa. However, most of the
employee do not care enough to think about it. The employer faces difficulties in monitoring
and differentiate between business calls or personal calls made by the employees. It is very
annoying when we deal business with someone who 24/7 with their mobile phone. It gives
bad impressions towards the company as if no one serious to run the business. If the
employer allows the employees to use their mobile phone during working hours, I believe
that the company will be in trouble. This is because when people get connected to their
mobile phone, they will not able to pay 100% attention toward their job.

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2.3 Balance Between Work and Life

We always heard complaints from employees who receive work-related calls outside of
normal working hours on personal mobile phone, may feel an imbalance between their work
and personal lives. It can be difficult yet disturbing for an employee to enjoy time away from
work when her duties spill over into family, social and rest time. When it happen frequently,
it will become a disturbance which can increase employee stress, reducing the ability of
employees to manage work tasks effectively.

Other than that, when the employees spend too much time on their mobile phone, we afraid
that they do not know to separate between work and personal issues. They might have
relationship problem at home perhaps having verbal fighting and they may bring the problem
to the workplace. They may continue the fight using the mobile phone and definitely when
they emotionally unbalance, how come they could perform well in the workplace.

2.4 Harassment

There are few cases that had been reported to be harassed by someone else through their
mobile phone. Normally, women employees are significantly more likely to experience this
problem than men. Some people might think this matter is not really a big deal. However,
like it or not, it does give impact towards one's emotion and psychology.

Harassment can occur through voice calls and text messages. In a voice context, it is often in
the form of prank calls. Both voice and text are used to deliver threats and insults. In addition,
sexual harassment also happen indirectly such as harass others behind their back, for instance
by spreading false rumors.

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2.5 Disruptive behaviours

It can be argued that mobile phone can cause a disruption in the workplace because of the
behaviours of the person who is using the phone is actually becomes the disruptor. It has been
reported that this behaviours lead to employee anger, anxiety, and stress level. Based on the
survey that I had conducted, there are four major disruptive behaviours in the workplace;
annoying ring tone, talking too loudly, interruptive meetings and improper conversation in
public.

Nowadays, people could download any song to be set as their mobile phones ring tone. They
love to have loud ring tones and conversations in public. They unaware of their co-workers
who are irritated with such loud noise.

Answering phone call, texting and surfing the internet are supposed not to be happened
during meeting. Even though they keep their phone in silent mode, they still could not help
themselves from get connected to the phone.

Personal conversation should be in private; not anyone to know. When personal conversation
occurs in public, the "...conversations expose us to what might be called eavesdropping"
(Ling, 2004). While in the workplace, co-workers will easily know our personal problems
like health issues, marital problem and financial difficulties that we are facing when we make
the our personal conversation like an announcement.

When we talk about behaviour, we could also relate to employees that commit legal-
consequence behaviours like talking and texting while driving and inappropriate camera use.
By today, we should already familiar with the term 'DWD' which stands for 'Driving While
Distracted'. DWD is a situation whereby the driver takes his or her eyes off the road to
answer or making calls, texting or updating their status in Facebook. Based on Redelemier
and Tibshirani (1997), said that the risk of collasion is four times higher when the driver use
mobile phone than not using it.

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3.0 The requirements for changes

We need to have better planning on making the policy. We have to assign few managers from
every departments to sit in a meeting, having face to face discussion so that we can come out
with the best policy that cater everyone needs.

Next, we should assign the secretary of the company to write a letter to the nearest hospital to
ask for the health expert to come to our company and give a talk about the harmful effects of
mobile phone. We also could invite somebody from management to give a briefing about the
policy.

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4.0 Conclusion

As the conclusion, even though we worry about the possible consequences of such a cell
phone policy, concerned whether the employees will throw a fit or even quit. My suggestion
is to simply tell the employees the truth. I would suggest you to show them the math. I
believe most employees do not want to lose their. Most employees probably have not
considered the real costs and if they do not bother, I think you do not need them as
employees.

As the work world changes, you must adapt or fail. I realize this is a tough one culturally, but
you should at least recognize the cost and do the best to limit or even eliminate losses related
to employee cell phone use. This will not only create a more effective and productive
workplace, but it also will most assuredly improve the bottom line.

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5.0 References

1.http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/09/26/cell-phone-and-harmful-health-_n_1916290.html

2. Ling, R (2004). The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone Impact on Society. San

Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann

3. Radelmeier, D.A, & Tibshirani, R.J. (1997). Association between cell-telephone calls and

motor vehicle collisions. New England Journal of Medicine, 336(7), 453-458.

4. http://schaedelawblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/cell-phones-in-workplace.html

5.http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/assignment-chicago/2013/05/do-you-have-a-great-

workplace-.html

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6.0 Appendixes

NSSR Company is investigating the issue of mobile phone in this company. We want to
promote workplace health and positive working environment. We are interested in learning
more about your opinions, needs and situations. Your answers will be used to help the
management to come out with better solutions and what can we offer to you.

 Senior management has agreed to let everyone take a few minutes to complete this survey.
 Please do not put your name on the form because we would like to keep this survey
confidential.
 Please return the forms by putting them in a sealed envelope and placing them in the inter-
office mail.

1. Sex:

Male Female

2. Age Group:

under 21 21 - 30 31 - 40

41 - 50 51 - 60 over 60

3. Do you have mobile phone (s)?

Yes No

4. Do you have any health concerns about yourself, your family, or something arising from
the workplace?

5. Would you like NSSR Company to help with these concerns?

Yes No Not sure

Explain your answer

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6. How much time do you spend on your mobile phone a day?

1-2 hours 3- 5 hours 6-8 hours

7. Indicate how you feel about the following statements:

Not
sure/
Agree No Disagree
Strongly Agree opinion Disagree Strongly

On the whole, I like my job.

I feel that I am well rewarded for

the effort I put in at work.

I am happy with the balance

between my work time and my
leisure time.

At work, my level of authority is

about the same as my level of
responsibility.

6. Which of the following statement explains about you and your mobile phone? (You may
tick more than one statement)

Yes No Maybe

I really need to bring my mobile phone everywhere

I do not mind to leave my phone for good reason

I only use my mobile phone for making and accepting calls

I use my phone for calling and texting

I use my phone for calling, texting and social networking

I use my phone only once in an hour

I use my phone more than 3 times in an hour

I feel fatigue when I spend too much time on my phone

I am having insomnia

I feel eye stress when I look at small bright screen with small font.

I feel pain on my ears when I speak too much on my phone

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I feel dizzy when I spend too much time on my phone

I never use my mobile phone when working

I use my phone only during break and lunch time

I can't do my job without my mobile phone

I can focus on my job even I use my mobile phone at the same time

I get call(s) from company during my holiday

Sometimes I late for my dateline

Never late for my dateline

I have personal email

I only use company email for work purposes

If I want to go online, I will use company's wifi

If I want to go online, I use my own internet services

I don't have problem in balancing family and work

Other: (please list)

7. If. NSSR Company wants to make a course, talk or campaign, when would you be able to
participate?

Day of the Week Season Time Period

Monday Spring Before work

Tuesday Summer Lunch time

Wednesday Fall After work

Thursday Winter Evenings

Friday Other

Weekends (for family events)

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8. Where would you prefer to attend a program?

Work
Private Health Club
Local School or Facility/Hall
Other

9. If necessary, would you be willing to share in the cost of a program?

Yes No

10. Do you have any additional comments or concerns you would like the committee to
know?

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