This is Barry mold still getting your small business unstuck? There's one thing that's in your business that actually is growing your business. It's this thing. Does it seem familiar to you? It's the smartphone that everybody has stuck in their hand all the time. And for employees, it's a huge distraction.
The reason it's distraction is not because the smartphone is inherently bad. It's because you have not established any rules around it. And if you do have rules, you're afraid to enforce it. You're afraid to get into your employees personal life and you're afraid that you're actually going to get them upset. But I will tell you not having rules and regulations and thinking about the effect that a smart phone has on your business, it really does hurt it on a day to day basis. That's because it is a total distraction.
You can't help but monitor your smartphone. If it's on all day. employees have too much of a temptation to check what's going on. And it's very, very important to have a policy, there is no right policy, but you need to have a use of smartphone policy inside your company. The first way to determine what the right policy is, think about, is there a business reason for all of your employees or certain of your employees to actually have a smartphone. Now, if you have a warehouse and people are driving a warehouse truck or something like that, there's no way they should be on a smartphone, or if they're doing any kind of driving.
If there is no reason for your employees to have a smartphone, except for emergencies then simply don't allow it. It is not realistic to be able to kind of constantly monitor personal use of smartphones. So just Don't allow them in the marketplace. Make sure that you put this in your HR policy and be consistent in enforcing it for the entire team. And that means your managers and also you, which is the most difficult part. One of the reasons people have taken smartphones out of the workplace is because this thing on the back of a smartphone right here, it's called a camera.
Can you say cheese? Many small business owners are concerned that confidential information will actually leak out of the company through an employee's smartphone. They're also worried that images of what goes on inside a company will appear on social media feeds like Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn things that they do not want to actually be there. If your employees the need a smartphone for a business reason, then you should simply issue a separate phone now, this is rarely done because in our society today, most small business owners practice what is commonly called BYOD. Bring Your Own Device. And people just use one smartphone for personal and business.
Now, issuing a separate smartphone for business may be more expensive. But I'm here to tell you, it will really be worth it in terms of focusing people on just doing business during business hours. On that smartphone, you only load business applications, and then you have every right to track how they're actually using the phone. Another important part of getting control of smartphones in your organization is to make sure that you leave the phone out of meetings that you have at your company. Now in the olden days when people used to sit down, they used to take their gun and laid on the table or the desk today. I believe everyone should take their smartphone out of their pocket before meeting.
Put it on the table on on the desk and shut it off. And so we know that everyone is focused on this meeting. If you always have a smartphone on the culture that builds around it is that the next interruption is always more important than is what's going on right at this moment. And that will kill your company. implement this policy and watch the productivity in your company store. Now, it may be difficult and rocky from the very beginning.
But once you implement it, it will send a strong signal to your customers that you are there actually to focus on only them. Think about the one change you're going to make and implementing a new smartphone policy. This is Barry mole still getting small business unstuck. Have a great day.