MANILA, Philippines — Your smartphone is affecting your work performance more than you think it does. A recent study conducted by Universities of Würzburg and Nottingham Trent revealed that the closer your smartphone is to you during work hours, the less productive you become.
For the psychological experiment, 95 persons between 19 and 56 years of age were asked to perform a concentration test under four different circumstances: with their smartphone in their pocket, at their desk, locked in a drawer and removed from the room completely.
Below are the significant findings:
- Test results were lowest when the smartphone was on the desk.
- They are 26 percent more productive without their smartphones on desk.
- As the distance between the smartphone and the owner increased, their test results also increased.
- Contrary to expectations, anxiety levels were consistent across all experiments;meaning the absence of the smartphone didn’t make participants nervous.
- Anxiety levels at work are not affected by smartphones (or the absence of smartphones), rather, it can be impacted by gender. In this case, women were more anxious than their male counterparts.
“Previous studies have shown that on the one hand, separation from one’s smartphone has negative emotional effects, such as increased anxiety, but, on the other hand, studies have also demonstrated that one’s smartphone may act as an distractor when present. In other words, both the absence and presence of a smartphone could impair concentration,” Jens Binder from the University of Nottingham Trent said in a statement.
“In summary, our findings from this study indicate that it is the absence, rather than the presence, of a smartphone that improves concentration,” Astrid Carolus from the University of Würzburg added.
The results of the experiment correlate with the findings of an earlier survey named “Digital Amnesia at Work,” which concluded that digital devices can have a negative impact on concentration levels. It showed, for example, that typing notes into digital devices during meetings lowers the level of understanding of what is actually happening in the meeting.
While banning digital devices from the workplace is not really an option, the study gives businesses an insight on how to improve their productivity.
“Instead of expecting permanent access to their smartphones, employee productivity might be boosted if they have dedicated 'smartphone-free' time. One way of doing this is to enforce ‘meeting rules’—such as no phones, and no computers—in the normal work environment,”said Sylvia Ng, Kaspersky Lab general manager for Southeast Asia.
“Businesses should also be aware that in today’s connected business landscape, lower concentration levels can be a security issue. Advanced targeted attacks, for example, can only be discovered if employees are alert and on the look-out for unexpected and unusual email content. It is therefore vital that businesses develop security processes, including training sessions, to increase employee alertness, whether employees are using their smartphones at work, or not,” Ng said.
The study was commissioned by Kaspersky lab. — Alixandra Caole Vila