Are smartphones and other intelligent devices eliminating whatever is left of our sense of what is right and wrong? It’s probably not that drastic, but a new study of senior management behavior indicates they sure are teaching us or reinforcing some already existing bad habits.
For example, nearly half senior company officials refuse to take videoconferencing calls because they are inappropriately dressed.
The survey of 2,200 managers across the U.S., UK and Australia by Avaya showed that chief executives working remotely or on the road are likely functioning in a bathrobe and smartphone users on the whole had the most bad conference call habits – 17% of senior vice presidents will sleep during conference calls compared with 5% per cent of more junior staff.Some more salient points:
* 44% of CEOs or C-level executives said they would not want others to see them on a video conference because they are often at home wearing pajamas, compared with 9% of more junior managers.
* Smartphone users are twice as likely to take a call from a toilet as traditional mobile users and 51% have participated in a conference call wearing only a bathrobe – or less.
* E-mailing on their phone or PDA under the desk was a habit for 63%. This same group was also more likely to log-on at personal events.
* The survey also found that twice as many smartphone users have checked e-mail or text messages during a wedding or funeral than non-smartphone users.
All of this may come as no surprise to the non-smartphone using world.
A study we reported on in January, found almost one in five small business managers read work-related e-mails and other documents in the bathroom, presumably at work.
It’s worse that almost 50% of them said they work while driving, but the bathroom? What could be that interesting? (This study follows another one that indicated more Americans are logging wirelessly into the Internet – from their bathrooms.) The newspaper I understand.
The survey of 300 small business owners (with up to 20 employees) was sponsored by Staples and conducted by International Communications Research.
Additionally, the pervasiveness of mobile phones and hand-held e-mail devices has only contributed to these long hours at untraditional times.
More than two-thirds (68%) work on days off, checking e-mail, voicemail or making work-related calls; And it gets worse.
Earlier this year a study said active daters are more likely to communicate with their counterpart via text messaging than married couples or those in committed relationships are, a survey conducted by International Communications Research.
Fifty-nine percent of those actively dating and not in one single relationship said they had sent a text message to their partner, as opposed to 30 percent of those in monogamous relationships or married.
Overall, 33 percent said they had communicated with a date or partner with text messaging, up from 27 percent in 2006.
However, wireless users were almost as likely to be repulsed by their date’s phone habits as wooed by them.
Thirty-eight percent said that a date took a phone call in the middle of a great conversation, while 31 percent admitted to doing it themselves.
Five percent said they called another prospect during a date, while seven percent said their date had done so.
Eight percent said they had ended a relationship over poor phone etiquette, and six percent said their judged their prospective mate on their telephone manners.
Then there is CrackBerry.com, a Web site dedicated to users of the ubiquitous BlackBerry mobile devices.
The site includes a “13-step program” that promises to help in overcoming a BlackBerry addiction.
The program calls for users to accept that “only greater power of wirelessness can restore us to sanity” and that “to turn our will and our lives over to the power of unconnectedness and eschew knowing if someone is mailing us at this very moment.” And of course we have always had naked telecommuting, or at least, it seems that way.
