It’s easy to get distracted at work. Other people carrying on conversations, annoying phones ringing, or even the normal white noise of any office environment can be enough to distract an employee’s attention away from work-related tasks. Several years ago, when access to the Internet became widely available to most workers, distraction rose to an entirely new level. But in recent years, technology has produced what is arguably the biggest distraction of all for office workers: the smartphone.
Recent studies show that American workers are becomingly increasingly addicted to their phones. In fact, research conducted just this year shows that the average adult in the US spends nearly four hours a day on his or her smartphone or mobile device. That’s nearly half of a workday! So it’s inevitable that those same people will be spending at least some portion of that time on their phones during work hours.
It was just a few years ago when managers had to contend with employees wasting time during work hours by “cyberloafing” on their desktop work computers. Now, thanks to smartphone technology, an employee doesn’t have to resort to using a work computer to waste time at work – instead, he or she can simply use their own smartphone or other mobile device to shop, chat with friends and family, post messages on social media, check out the latest news, or anything else that happens to interest them at the moment.
At one time, managers tried to curb their employees’ Internet usage by blocking Internet sites or installing “spyware” on their work computers to see how their workers were using (or misusing) their time. Those were never effective methods for a variety of reasons. But now that “cyberloafing” takes place primarily on the employee’s own personal smartphone or mobile device, installing spyware or blocking software on a work computer is completely moot.
So how can you curb your workers’ use of smartphones during work hours? The answer is simple: measure how productive each employee is and motivate them to do better. That’s what MySammy is all about. By providing quantifiable performance measurement data for managers, MySammy can help supervisors to set performance standards and motivate their employees to achieve and exceed those performance requirements. MySammy not only measures what employees do, it also measures what employees do not do. Don’t let smartphones distract your employees and lower their productivity levels at work! Sign up for your free trial of MySammy today!