Sayonara, Siri: the debate on banning smartphones in meetings

It’s meeting time and you’re up at bat to deliver an important project.  You’ve spent hours devising presentation material and you’re excited to share all of your hard work with your colleagues. As you’re immersed in your presentation, you notice your colleague thumbing through his smartphone. You’re shocked by his discourtesy, until you recall that you were guilty of a similar offense two meetings ago. It brings up the question of cell phones in business meetings: flat-out inconsiderate or no big deal?

When people fiddle with their smartphones, it’s unclear whether or not they are taking notes, running Google searches, or playing solitaire. Therefore, when people get phone-happy during meetings, it appears that they’re not giving their colleagues and employers their undivided attention.

What are the statistics behind distraction?

• Multitasking can make a task take about 50% longer
• About 28% of  an office worker’s time is lost to interruptions and recovery time
• Interruptions cost the U.S. about $900 billion per year
• 50.8% of workers in a poll by career site Beyond.com voted cell phone interrupters as the most bothersome

Is constant smartphone usage an addiction? New research says smartphone dependency derives from brief, repetitive inspection of dynamic content that is quickly accessible on the device. However, it’s not quite an addiction; it’s more a struggle to maintain effective self-regulation over problematic habit-driven behavior.

Still, banning phones from conference rooms seems overly harsh and not reflective of the times. Smartphones are small distractions, but also mini-portals of information.  Sometimes you need to check a fact, make notes, or update the team in ‘real time’ on relevant news events. Lee Malleau, senior vice president of the Calgary Economic Development agency, said cell phone dependency is also caused by the industry in which you work. “You go to Silicon Valley and you’ll see very few people who don’t have a phone in their hand all the time. It’s part of the culture. In other industries, it’s not as much a part of the culture.”

One option for dealing with phones in meetings is to set a loose guideline. For example, turn your phone off at the start of the meeting unless you’re expecting an emergency call. If you feel the need to look up something, you can tell the group that you’re doing so in order to avoid offending anyone. If people have differing views on bringing phones, you can put it to a vote of whether or not to leave them in.

At the end of the day, it’s a judgment call. If other coworkers have brought their phones to fact-check, there’s no reason why you can’t either. However, if you feel everyone glaring at you because you’re too preoccupied with answering e-mails, say adios to the iPhone for an hour.