How many business owners allow field employees to carry personal cell phones on the job?

Do you really think in this day and age, you as an employer can control your employee carrying a phone???ÿ ?ÿYou can have rules about being on the phone during work, for sure.?ÿ but to say they can't have one on hand??ÿ ?ÿHow would you even enforce that??ÿ ?ÿ

@andy-j

Andy - I'm not trying to do anything, I don't have to worry about this crap anymore, just wanted different opinions. ???? 

An employee may need an occasional short call concerning doctor appointments or sudden family emergencies. A good employee won't abuse that.?ÿ If they are yakking with friends or following F*ceb**k while the project awaits their attention, some discipline and poor reviews are in order.

@flga  got ya!   And I didn't mean "You"  as in just you.   

I'm neither an employee nor an employer, so I won't answer the poll question. I will comment on calendars.

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Almost everybody these days keeps their calendar on a computer (I include smartphones in the computer category). Virtually all employees are given time off, either paid or unpaid, during what otherwise would be a work day or work week. Virtually all employees may be asked (or required) to work overtime on short notice.

Thus, essentially all employees need to have a calendar that shows both personal commitments and work commitments. In theory two different calendars could be consulted physically side-by-side, but this is error-prone. If accuracy of the calendar is paramount, then either the employee needs to enter his/her personal appointments on the work calendar, or his/her work appointments on the personal calendar.

An employee who thinks ahead will want to keep the work appointments on the personal calendar, because eventually the employee will leave the company, and may have difficulty transferring the personal appointments from the work calendar to (new) personal calendar.

bring your phone...

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You might need to video something.

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You know, like...

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contractor pulling your stakes... something like that...

I am expected to carry and use my own phone -

Mostly used for company calls and texts to and from the office and colleagues

and site photos.

and No, they don't cover the costs

I annoy them by not having a smartphone 🙂

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lol, not having a smartphone, savvy play.

Just about everyplace I have worked wants to issue me a phone, I turn it down because two phones is one too many.

I would appreciate a stipend in lieu of but somehow that is unacceptable, funny how the mind works.

As a crew chief, some hands need a phone to calm down and sometimes a helper who is happily staring into the nowhere of their phone is more helpful than one who is breathing down your neck for the next move. I had a guy one time who would come to the truck and make sure the spray paint cans were properly agitated when he got bored while I was calcing, an example of when doing nothing is better than something.?ÿ ?ÿ

If I have a problem with field crew members spending too much time on their personal cell phones then it's me (or my managers) who made a hiring error that needs to be remedied.?ÿ ?ÿ

@jimcox. Passive-aggressive for the win!!!!!

Another consideration is that blanket policies that treat everyone as suspect are generally a big red flag to stay away from that employer.

If you do not trust me to manage my telephone time, I will in turn not trust you to be a operation worth working for.

I do have a smart phone, but never carry it. I use just an ordinary candy bar call/text phone. Out in the field, every time I look at the staff, they're looking at or tapping away at their smartphone, and I'm thinking they must be busy sorting out other projects.

The busiest workers seem to be machine operators, particularly excavators. When you want the machine to be a machining, the operator is never in the cab, so you have to go find them and wait for them to finish phoning their issue with that other project. Then when they are machining, you have to stop and wait every 2 minutes while the phoning issues on other projects continue to get resolved.?ÿ

We give each of our employees a $50/month reimbursement towards their work related use of their personal cell phone.?ÿ I expect they'll have personal stuff come up through the course of the day, I do.?ÿ?ÿ

Phone is in the pocket. Ringer off while in the field. OK to be on in the rig.?ÿ We use it mostly to find the job, or check traffic. But mostly for emergencies or to contact the client if something is not working out the way it was planned.?ÿ?ÿ

@richard-imrie     That seems like a good policy.  I'll admit to being addicted to my smart phone.   Maybe carrying something like my old badass Nokia for calls would limit the time suck of a smart phone in the filed.   

We offer a stipend to use their personal phone for work related calls.?ÿ That works best for us and keeps things simple IMO.

If you are going to be that much of a control freak, you are going to have to offer very good pay and benefits to make up for it, or just learn to love with high turnover.?ÿ

The only way?ÿ I could ever imagine telling an employ which personal items they can bring with them is as a probationary measure.?ÿ

Back in the day when I had actual employees I paid for their phones.?ÿ Why limit the abilities of communication because of a fear.?ÿ If it looked like they were abusing for personal communications during work hours I dealt with it.?ÿ I could never figure out outfits that require you to use a company issued phone.

Until I retired last week, I usually carried both my State-issued phone and my personal phone. Not an issue as long as personal use of either one on company time was de minimis.