Do you have to provide a personal mobile phone number if/when asked?

Money_and_Travel

B0bbyEwing said:

Voyager2002 said:

Don't refuse... simply say that you don't have a mobile.

Not an option I'm afraid. 
Or at least it is, but I may as well say something like I have 2 heads because they'll know that's a lie also.

 Pop into ASDA and get a Talk and Text SIM, which only costs £4 a month.

Put that in a spare phone, and give them that number, then leave that phone at home/in the drawer.

Within a week or so, the battery will be flat, and the problem will be solved.   

FrugaiMacDugal

Just refuse, if they suspend you or threaten to sack you, then, if in a union, get them on the job, or ACAS or maybe a tribunal.

Stand firm, stand proud.

Grumpy_chap

B0bbyEwing said:

I'm asking this because I currently have a works mobile phone but I'm expecting that to change in the near future (I suspect they'll soon as for it back). 

Why is the employer changing from the current situation and no longer going to provide work phones?
Given how low cost a mobile service can be, one has to assume that the driver is not financial.

I understand the OP not wanting to incur any cost.  While I might not take the same view given the low cost involved, why should the OP incur this low cost and not the employer (as currently)?

I also understand why the OP might want a separate mobile number for work use other than the private mobile number.  It allows one phone to be offline while the other is active.  

Are there ways the OP can have a mobile number just to give to work but not incur a cost?
 - Some broadband services come with a VOIP (landline) number included but not everyone bothers with a landline - could that be given as the work number?
 - Our broadband service was cheaper with a Virgin Mobile (O2) SIM than without but I did not want to change numbers and was mid-contract for mobile elsewhere so that SIM is in a drawer somewhere.  In the past I had a similar thing with EE broadband.  If I needed to give work a number, I'd find that SIM and use the number.

B0bbyEwing

MattMattMattUK said:

vacheron said:

If the company requires you to use your company phone during working hours (or outside of hours for direct company business) then they should be providing the phone, or at least offering to reimburse you for the costs. The same applies to laptops, cars, and all other equipment.

The issue with taking that position is that there is usually zero if any cost associated with someone using a personal phone or laptop for the occasional bit of work. Most phone contracts are all you can eat, a phone call or text costs nothing (and HMRC do not allow a proportional use element to be paid as a tax free expense), occasionally logging in on a personal laptop or PC to do something might have a tiny electricity cost, a few pence at most. Car usage is reimbursed on a per mile basis because it does have a realistic cost in both fuel and upkeep, but it is generally an exception.

vacheron said:

There is a grey area regarding being contactable for personal reasons. i.e. to offer a shift, to inform you over the weekend of, say, a cancelled event on a Monday so you don't drive 30 miles out of your way for no good reason.

If an employee refused to supply their personal mobile number then I would not employ them, slightly different with an existing employee, but it would certainly be an issue as I do not employ paranoid types. We have a company policy about work contact out of hours and the general rule is that if it is a work related then I would send a WhatsApp first. 

vacheron said:

Our company recently moved to using the Microsoft Authenticator app to log in to our work PC's (with no other logon option available). There was a lot of resistance to this by those without company phones as this basically required staff to use their own personal phones. This caused a number of complaints on the basis that if our IT department wanted to implement new secure systems, they also provide the employees with the tools to do so.

We have MS Authenticator in place and employees have it on their personal devices, none of them are paranoid so none had an issue with it, most already had it for their own accounts anyway.

vacheron said:

Finally, about a month after an agreement was reached, a blanket e-mail was sent across the company from personnel reminding people that personal mobile phones were not be used during working hours! 

That kind of policy usually arises because employees refuse to behave like adults. I trust my employees to get on with their jobs and not not use their phones during the day unless actually needed (eg. checking social medial is not needed, playing games is not needed, continually messaging a partner is not needed, taking a call from their child's school is fine, their partner calling for a sensible reason is fine), I have only once ever had an employee who had issues with that, who was obsessed with playing a stupid game on their phone, it interfered with their work so the choice was to stop playing the game or be performance managed out of the business, they chose the former and felt much better for it once they had stopped wasting their time.

Too many people seem to want to go out of their way to cause trouble with their employer, to be deliberately confrontational over things that do not matter, to put barriers in the way rather than have a healthy relationship, being a difficult employee is never a sensible thing to be.

As you're an employer it's interesting to get the other side's POV. Obviously you're not my sides other side but you're someone's. 

I don't like this forums editing (as opposed to the easiness of other forums) so I'm afraid you'll have to bare with me as I number things...

1. You wouldn't employ them if they didn't supply a mobile phone number. Why is that? I get in this day and age, especially with younger folk, it is becoming the norm to ONLY have a mobile and not to have a landline. What if the reverse were true - and someone didn't have a mobile but only had a landline? Would you order them to get a mobile? Obviously that's not the case with me as I've provided the landline so in my opinion I'm not being "deliberately confrontational" - I'm supplying a contact number. In fact I've supplied two as I've given an additional one as an emergency contact.

2. Some of your post I can pass on because when we start talking about cars and laptops and emails - none of that applies to my role.

3. We had/have a policy of no personal phones (not sure where the goalposts currently are) but then they (management) started phoning members of our department (can you check this, this order has been changed, so on & so forth) so it was a don't use your personal phone but use your personal phone situation. I think that it's gone on that long now that it's probably still an official rule but it's just ignored by all.
We have people in our department who abuse it. Especially younger ones. Constantly on the phone to their girlfriend over nothing at all. The other week their OH phoned them to say the dog had escaped. I heard the panic in this lads voice & was semi listening in. As the conversation went on his girlfriend finished it with "only joking". Yep I'm not making that up either.
I say especially younger ones but it's been older ones too. Wives phoning - how's your day, what you up to, blah blah blah. Knowing full well that it's nowhere near their break time. Unless there's an emergency, I contact my OH on my break & my dinner, that's it. But we're drifting off topic now.

I think there needs to be a break between work life & home life. I understand work is life to some people & good for them but it's also not life for others. I don't want to be outside of work being pestered by work. In my role there'd be no such thing as being contacted on the Sunday to be told of a change for the Monday. You deal with Monday on Monday & nothing carries over to the next day.

B0bbyEwing

zagfles said:
But lots of dodgy employers will expect people to get in bang on time and then complain if they don't stay late to finish stuff off. 

Yep I and others have had that one thrown at us when the boss-boss is in a bad mood. 

"All you want to do is go home".

Well yes. Once I've worked 10 hours the last thing I want to do is work MORE hours. Is that really so bad? Because before those 10 hours I had another 1.5 hours getting ready for work, I had 0.5 hours getting home so that's 12 hours. Now if you don't want my tiredness impacting work then that's going to take us to 20 hours meaning there's only 4 hours left to do a number of things that need doing & that's before I get to the things I WANT to do so is it really so bad that I want to go home after the usual 10 hours & not do even more overtime?

Problem is, employers (can only talk from my own experience, some aren't like this I know) think because they're there all day every day that you should be. It's YOUR business though, not mine. If I was pulling x-millions per year like yourself instead of a fraction above minimum wage then it may tempt me to be at work more but I'm not so it doesn't.

Tucosalamanca

You wouldn't employ them if they didn't supply a mobile phone number. Why is that? I get in this day and age, especially with younger folk, it is becoming the norm to ONLY have a mobile and not to have a landline. What if the reverse were true - and someone didn't have a mobile but only had a landline? Would you order them to get a mobile?

I had to read this twice.

Speaking both as an individual and an employer.
If someone said to me that they didn't have a mobile, I'd simply assume that they were lying to me.

Saying 'landline only' is a massive red flag in 2025, I probably go further and say that such a person would be unemployable, it's not normal behaviour.

zagfles

Tucosalamanca said:

You wouldn't employ them if they didn't supply a mobile phone number. Why is that? I get in this day and age, especially with younger folk, it is becoming the norm to ONLY have a mobile and not to have a landline. What if the reverse were true - and someone didn't have a mobile but only had a landline? Would you order them to get a mobile?

I had to read this twice.

Speaking both as an individual and an employer.
If someone said to me that they didn't have a mobile, I'd simply assume that they were lying to me.

Saying 'landline only' is a massive red flag in 2025, I probably go further and say that such a person would be unemployable, it's not normal behaviour.

Unemployable for not having a mobile? Seriously? The only mobile I have, and have had for 20 years, is supplied by my employer. If I applied for another job I could genuinely say I have no mobile, as I wouldn't if I left my current job. If having a mobile is an essential requirement for any job, then the employer should supply one. Just like a car etc. 

EnPointe

zagfles said:

Tucosalamanca said:

You wouldn't employ them if they didn't supply a mobile phone number. Why is that? I get in this day and age, especially with younger folk, it is becoming the norm to ONLY have a mobile and not to have a landline. What if the reverse were true - and someone didn't have a mobile but only had a landline? Would you order them to get a mobile?

I had to read this twice.

Speaking both as an individual and an employer.
If someone said to me that they didn't have a mobile, I'd simply assume that they were lying to me.

Saying 'landline only' is a massive red flag in 2025, I probably go further and say that such a person would be unemployable, it's not normal behaviour.

Unemployable for not having a mobile? Seriously? The only mobile I have, and have had for 20 years, is supplied by my employer. If I applied for another job I could genuinely say I have no mobile, as I wouldn't if I left my current job. If having a mobile is an essential requirement for any job, then the employer should supply one. Just like a car etc. 

you are part of a tiny minority of  working age people  now 

 it's a red flag in the   sense of ' never trust a man who carries 2 wallets '

zagfles

B0bbyEwing said:

zagfles said:
But lots of dodgy employers will expect people to get in bang on time and then complain if they don't stay late to finish stuff off. 

Yep I and others have had that one thrown at us when the boss-boss is in a bad mood. 

"All you want to do is go home".

Well yes. Once I've worked 10 hours the last thing I want to do is work MORE hours. Is that really so bad? Because before those 10 hours I had another 1.5 hours getting ready for work, I had 0.5 hours getting home so that's 12 hours. Now if you don't want my tiredness impacting work then that's going to take us to 20 hours meaning there's only 4 hours left to do a number of things that need doing & that's before I get to the things I WANT to do so is it really so bad that I want to go home after the usual 10 hours & not do even more overtime?

Problem is, employers (can only talk from my own experience, some aren't like this I know) think because they're there all day every day that you should be. It's YOUR business though, not mine. If I was pulling x-millions per year like yourself instead of a fraction above minimum wage then it may tempt me to be at work more but I'm not so it doesn't.

IME in a larger company, it's down to the individual line manager you have. We have had useless line managers in the past, the sort who think you ought to be grateful for having a job and should do what you're told without question, and that flexibility only works one way (eg you stay late to finish off, but still be in on time tomorrow). They never lasted long.

Current manager is great, she gets so much more from her staff by basically allowing people to be themselves and embracing diversity in a positive way, not diversity in an identity politics sense but diversity of personality and attitude. Eg some in the team are plodders who can be relied on to get into work on time, who want to leave on time, and who want to do the boring mundane stuff rather than learning the new stuff and do challenging work. Others will want to always be at leading edge learning new stuff and doing the hard challenging work, they'll often turn up late and work late and be unpredictable but will pick up the new stuff and train the others. Both types are needed in our job, and a good manager will recognise that rather than expecting everyone to be the same. 

Tucosalamanca

If you were applying for another job, would you honestly say 'I haven't got a mobile'?
You'd explain the situation and establish a way forward. If a phone is an essential work tool, of course the employer should be providing one.
Would you stop using a mobile if your job didn't require it, would you go landline only?
It's not a question I've ever asked at interview. If someone wants to have a 'dumb' phone, like a Doro, that's fine.
If someone passed interview (unlikely if a mobile number hadn't been provided), completed a new-starter form and at that point it became apparent that they wouldn't provide a mobile number, as above, I'd assume that they were lying and their employment wouldn't progress...