With smartphones becoming a commonplace in workplaces, it was only a matter of time before they started proving themselves detrimental to the employee productivity, workplace environment, and security of business. In the beginning, it was just the usual nuisance, i.e. lengthy call sessions and excessive workplace texting, but soon smartphones took the nuisance to a whole new level by giving employees access to chat apps. Convenient and versatile as these communication tools are, they certainly don’t belong in the workplace. Although there are plenty of very good reasons for banning their use in work environments, we have just highlighted five, albeit most important, reasons below.
Time Wasting
The first and the biggest issue with chat apps is that employees have a huge tendency of getting addicted to them. Rather than focusing on their work duties and concentrating on helping the company inch closer towards its business goals, they instead focus on exchanging messages, pictures, and videos through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, LINE, Viber, etc. This of course is unacceptable as they were not hired and offered a salary for socializing. A lot of employers and managers are dealing with this situation by introducing a cell phone usage policy that doesn’t simply prohibit excessive use of smartphones in the workplace, but also allows the mobile communications of employees to be monitored through tools like http://www.mobistealth.com/mobile-phone-spy-software. The latter in particular do a great job of keeping employees on their toes and discouraging them from spending too much time on chat apps. Of course, banning chat apps completely can prove to be an even more effective solution.
Reduction in Employee Efficiency
Another reason to ban chat apps in the workplace is because of their negative impact on employees’ overall performance. This is a direct consequence of the time wasting point that was made earlier. Since socializing through chat apps is far more fun than performing work duties, it has a huge tendency to rise above the latter on an employee’s priority list. This naturally takes a heavy toll on employees’ efficiency as they simply don’t give enough time and attention to what’s important for business, and instead focus more on what’s important for them. Of course, low employee efficiency results in lower overall productivity, which poses a huge risk to the very survival of a business.
Contagious
Time wasting and reduction in employee efficiency was bad enough as it was, but what make chat apps even more harmful for a business is their tendency to be highly contagious. If one employee uses them excessively, it’s only a matter of time before others pick up the habit and start indulging in it excessively.  The inaction on part of the management only adds to the problem as employees begin to think that nobody has an issue with their using chat apps during work hours. Needless to say, this starts to make time wasting a norm in the work environment, thus affecting company-wide productivity.
Data Leakage
Data leakage is a threat that pretty much every business operating in a competitive market constantly faces. Losing sensitive information to a competitor or the blackmarket can really bring a business to its knees, which is why a lot of companies invest thousands and even millions of dollars to secure all potentially risky channels. Traditionally, devious employees used emails to leak data, but nowadays, chat apps have made the job even easier for them. They find themselves with the option to leak sensitive information in the form of text, pictures, videos, and even audio messages. This certainly poses a huge threat to the interests of a business, and therefore should be dealt with immediately. By far the best solution to this problem is to ban chat apps in the workplace completely.
Bandwidth Hogging
Just because a few employees want to socialize with their friends and family, the rest have to suffer from the slower internet speeds. Messaging platforms don’t seem like they’ll take a lot of bandwidth, and they generally don’t. However, when employees use them to send pictures and videos, which they tend to do quite regularly because the option is right there to be used, then that sucks in a lot of bandwidth. Since a lot of businesses these days rely on fast and uninterrupted internet services, the sluggish speeds can affect their operations and quality of services.
