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

zagfles

MattMattMattUK said:

B0bbyEwing said:

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. 

For context I have been on the other side as well, fifteen years of working for other people, eleven years of working for myself, six of those employing staff as well.

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

It shows a total lack of engagement with the business. I do not ask that staff make themselves available for customers outside of work hours, I do that myself. Very occasionally I might need to urgently clarify something with an employee outside of hours because I need to sort something for a client, probably only once every couple of months, so a staff member might get contacted on something work related once or twice a year. A landline is not really a great form of contact, especially as many people are out of the home after work.

I do not think anyone of employment age does not have a mobile these days, some people might have a dumb phone, but I do not think I have met anyone in the last decade, even the most technophobic, who do not have a mobile of some description. 95% of all UK adults have a smartphone, even in the group with the lowest adoption, over 65s, 79% of them still have a smartphone, amongst under 55% it is 99%, amongst 55-64 it is 88% and the reality is that those without are them are probably not engaged with employment. 

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

It might not, but the for work part is still very important. Many people do not add commuting to their policy, Class 1 Business Insurance is needed if one is to drive to any other location for work other than a single, regular place of work, but costs somewhere between nothing and £20 for most people. If one is carrying goods for work, even just dropping something off on the way home then that requires Hire and Reward which is quite a lot more expensive. I make sure all my employees have the relevant insurance in place, I do not ask any of them to carry goods so there is no requirement for them to have Hire and Reward. For any mileage that they do for business I pay them 45p per mile which is the maximum HMRC allow before classing it as taxable income. All employees have work laptops, due to data protection they are not allowed to use them for personal purposes, no personal email, no games, no storing personal files, no streaming etc.

B0bbyEwing said:

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. 

If any of my employees were behaving like that they would initially get a verbal warning, it is not professional behaviour, but as I only employ fully functioning adults I do not have to deal with those kinds of antics. 

B0bbyEwing said:
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 am the same, friends and family have jobs, they do not want me messaging or calling them during the day just as I do not want them contacting me during the day, or message and I or they can reply at a convenient time. That being said many people have little impulse control, ability to delay gratification or common sense which is why they also use phones whilst driving.

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

I agree, I sometimes struggle to separate the two because it is my own business, evenings working when I realise that it is midnight and I need to go to bed, but equally I do not expect employees to work outside of office hours. If I was contacting an employee about something work related outside of hours there would be a valid reason, it would be important and urgent, not just on a whim, I doubt anyone rational would be able to deem it pestered. 

B0bbyEwing said:
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.

Then the frequency of contact should be very low to zero, but for a whole host of reasons it would still make sense to have a reliable form of contact which is what a mobile generally is. It could range from "the office has burnt down, do not come in on Monday" to "Jimmy has come down with tuberculosis, you need to get tested immediately". If they will never need to contact you then why take the deliberately confrontational route of refusing to give your number?

You only employ "fully functioning adults" yet ban them using the work laptop for personal purposes due to "data protection"? Really? What "data protection" issue is there if an employee uses their work laptop for internet banking, for personal excel/word documents etc?

I can understand not allowing software to be installed, or clogging up the laptop with thousands of personal photos/videos. but any "fully functional adult" would understand what sort of usage would compromise the laptop. If I have to have a work PC at home using my electricity and my broadband, them I'm going to use to use it for personal use. If I was office based I would leave my laptop at work if I wasn't able it to use for personal use, unless I was being paid to be on call. Why would I take it home? 

zagfles

DullGreyGuy said:

No doubt there are people out there that are different and things may be different if you work in a 24/7 department etc. Most managers however are employees themselves so not some scrooge like business owner raking in the millions. There are tools out there you can use to stop work calls/notifications if you want to switch off without literally turning the phone off. 

I worked in a 24/7 department for decades. The way this sort of thing works successfully is if staff and management co-operate to agree a rota system. For busy times, there'd be a shift on, for quiet times, an oncall rota.

But a couple of times we got a new manager who'd try to make their mark by trying the cut the shifts/oncall rotas, like to one person and expect them to phone round the others if he needed help. Never worked, because we'd all refuse, or if they tried to force it on us we'd simply state we're not taking any calls when not on shift/oncall. Goodwill was essential, as there'd always be occasions when someone not oncall would have to be called, however well staffed the rotas were. 

It was quite amusing when we got new managers from outside who were used to managing staff who just did what they were told. We knew our contracts, we knew we were needed and they'd have difficulty replacing us, we stuck together and any manager who tried to impose stuff on us didn't last long  But we were a good team, we did the job well, customers loved us, any decent manager who worked with us got good results from us. Some did need training though!

MattMattMattUK

vacheron said:

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.

I think your post makes sense if you are of the opinion (which it certainly appears based on your replies above) that employees are lazy, paranoid, difficult, troublemakers whereas management and / or business owners are nothing but generous benevolent benefactors. 

You seem to have got the wrong end of the stick, though based on your other posts I suspect deliberately. 
I recognise that good employees work well, bad employees do not, good managers improve employees working lives, bad managers do not. A business relationship is transactional, an employer pays for an employee to do a job, not for them to be on social media, the business gains from productive work, the employee gains from remuneration. I have worked with people who did the absolute minimum not to get sacked, sometimes below the minimum, but dragged out the process, made up health issues, refused to leave their phones alone, I have also worked with people who were badly treated by employers when they had genuine issues. There are bad employers, there are bad employees, but equally there are good employers and good employees. 

vacheron said: 

However in reality the oppisite is often the case, and while I myself often use my personal mobile for work purposes, the reason I do so is because I am not "obliged" to do so, and nor does anyone have the right to demand that I do. 

Your work having a contact number for you is not requiring you to use your personal phone for work purposes. 

vacheron said:

For the record, I am not talking about the boss or colleagues ringing to tell you something important or ask a quick question from time to time. I am talking about the phone being the thin end of a wedge to slowly and persistently intrude into someone's personal life. As the OP has previously had a company mobile which is being removed, I find it very hard to believe that this will result in an immediate reduction in the times they are contacted in this manner in the future.

People only use the "the thin end of the wedge" argument when they do not have a rational position for the current position. Something could change in the future, but that does not mean it will or is likely to. If an employer were constantly contacting me outside of work hours then I would tell them to stop calling me, not answer and/or change jobs.

vacheron said:

Yes, using a phone or laptop costs little, but calling and taking up an hour of someone's time outside of working hours or while they are on holiday asking if they could just "pop on your laptop" to send some info or look at something.has a significant cost, both in terms of unpaid hours and people's personal lives. 

You are exaggerating. Taking a 30-60 second phone call is not a significant impact on someone's life in any way. It would help if you dropped the hyperbole.

vacheron said:

Would a business owner be happy working for a client for free on the basis that the laptop they are using during the meeting "costs very little to run"?... thought not. 

That is a straw man argument. Businesses pay other businesses to do a job or task, they except that business to have the adequate equipment. They are more often than not paying for the skills rather than the equipment itself. If a company allows an employee to access company data on their personal laptop and an employee chooses to then that is fine. I would not expect an employee to be compelled to use their personal laptop for work, equally as an employee I and anyone not deliberately combinative with their employer was not bothered about using their laptop for five minutes to check something. 

vacheron said:

This may sound paranoid to you, but I have seen this happen many times in my career, and have even seen a marriage fail because one of the couple could not ignore the persistent call from work. Sometimes the managers involved don't realise, sometimes they just don't care, and yes, this has been a minority, but regardless the risk is not zero.

I have seen employees performance managed out because of their inability to stop going on social media, I have seen employees sacked for gross misconduct because they refused to do their job, there can be bad elements on both sides and your comments do sound paranoid, combative and hyperbolic. If we did not do things for every risk that was above zero we would never do anything in life because everything, even just getting out of bed had a risk (as does staying in bed). Anyone sensible would manage the issues as they arise, rather than creating a whole series of paranoid "what ifs" that might occur under some weird ideas of what might happen that they had created in their head.

MattMattMattUK

zagfles said:

MattMattMattUK said:

B0bbyEwing said:

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. 

For context I have been on the other side as well, fifteen years of working for other people, eleven years of working for myself, six of those employing staff as well.

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

It shows a total lack of engagement with the business. I do not ask that staff make themselves available for customers outside of work hours, I do that myself. Very occasionally I might need to urgently clarify something with an employee outside of hours because I need to sort something for a client, probably only once every couple of months, so a staff member might get contacted on something work related once or twice a year. A landline is not really a great form of contact, especially as many people are out of the home after work.

I do not think anyone of employment age does not have a mobile these days, some people might have a dumb phone, but I do not think I have met anyone in the last decade, even the most technophobic, who do not have a mobile of some description. 95% of all UK adults have a smartphone, even in the group with the lowest adoption, over 65s, 79% of them still have a smartphone, amongst under 55% it is 99%, amongst 55-64 it is 88% and the reality is that those without are them are probably not engaged with employment. 

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

It might not, but the for work part is still very important. Many people do not add commuting to their policy, Class 1 Business Insurance is needed if one is to drive to any other location for work other than a single, regular place of work, but costs somewhere between nothing and £20 for most people. If one is carrying goods for work, even just dropping something off on the way home then that requires Hire and Reward which is quite a lot more expensive. I make sure all my employees have the relevant insurance in place, I do not ask any of them to carry goods so there is no requirement for them to have Hire and Reward. For any mileage that they do for business I pay them 45p per mile which is the maximum HMRC allow before classing it as taxable income. All employees have work laptops, due to data protection they are not allowed to use them for personal purposes, no personal email, no games, no storing personal files, no streaming etc.

B0bbyEwing said:

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. 

If any of my employees were behaving like that they would initially get a verbal warning, it is not professional behaviour, but as I only employ fully functioning adults I do not have to deal with those kinds of antics. 

B0bbyEwing said:
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 am the same, friends and family have jobs, they do not want me messaging or calling them during the day just as I do not want them contacting me during the day, or message and I or they can reply at a convenient time. That being said many people have little impulse control, ability to delay gratification or common sense which is why they also use phones whilst driving.

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

I agree, I sometimes struggle to separate the two because it is my own business, evenings working when I realise that it is midnight and I need to go to bed, but equally I do not expect employees to work outside of office hours. If I was contacting an employee about something work related outside of hours there would be a valid reason, it would be important and urgent, not just on a whim, I doubt anyone rational would be able to deem it pestered. 

B0bbyEwing said:
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.

Then the frequency of contact should be very low to zero, but for a whole host of reasons it would still make sense to have a reliable form of contact which is what a mobile generally is. It could range from "the office has burnt down, do not come in on Monday" to "Jimmy has come down with tuberculosis, you need to get tested immediately". If they will never need to contact you then why take the deliberately confrontational route of refusing to give your number?

You only employ "fully functioning adults" yet ban them using the work laptop for personal purposes due to "data protection"? Really? What "data protection" issue is there if an employee uses their work laptop for internet banking, for personal excel/word documents etc?

Yes, my business works with sectors which have very strict data policies, huge amounts of work I do is covered by very strong NDAs, we have to have three tiers of protected data storage for some information and most of our customers also have blanket bans on personal use of work devices. 

The reality is, from either an employee or an employer situation no employee should be storing personal files on a work device, that creates a whole host of data protection issues because it is employee personal data that the business then controls and has access to.

zagfles said:

I can understand not allowing software to be installed, or clogging up the laptop with thousands of personal photos/videos. but any "fully functional adult" would understand what sort of usage would compromise the laptop.

Do people understand, because the amount of people that get caught out by fake websites, fake banking websites, fake shopping websites, fake DVLA websites etc. 

zagfles said:
If I have to have a work PC at home using my electricity and my broadband, them I'm going to use to use it for personal use. If I was office based I would leave my laptop at work if I wasn't able it to use for personal use, unless I was being paid to be on call. Why would I take it home? 

That might be you, but I doubt most people are bothered by the 1-2p an hour it might cost to use a work laptop at home if they needed to. Most people take a work laptop home to allow them to work from home on occasion, either planned in advance, or unplanned, or to go home early for some reason but keep up to date with work later in the evening. Many people also like to advance their career rather than sit in some pit of anger constantly raging at their employer so might choose to do the odd bit of work in an evening to get ahead in life. I have gained projects, promotions and new jobs, all leading to greater remuneration by doing the little bits when it makes a difference, regardless of if that is during work time, or taking a quick call in an evening and doing a bit of work out of normal hours. 

DullGreyGuy

zagfles said:

MattMattMattUK said:

B0bbyEwing said:

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. 

For context I have been on the other side as well, fifteen years of working for other people, eleven years of working for myself, six of those employing staff as well.

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

It shows a total lack of engagement with the business. I do not ask that staff make themselves available for customers outside of work hours, I do that myself. Very occasionally I might need to urgently clarify something with an employee outside of hours because I need to sort something for a client, probably only once every couple of months, so a staff member might get contacted on something work related once or twice a year. A landline is not really a great form of contact, especially as many people are out of the home after work.

I do not think anyone of employment age does not have a mobile these days, some people might have a dumb phone, but I do not think I have met anyone in the last decade, even the most technophobic, who do not have a mobile of some description. 95% of all UK adults have a smartphone, even in the group with the lowest adoption, over 65s, 79% of them still have a smartphone, amongst under 55% it is 99%, amongst 55-64 it is 88% and the reality is that those without are them are probably not engaged with employment. 

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

It might not, but the for work part is still very important. Many people do not add commuting to their policy, Class 1 Business Insurance is needed if one is to drive to any other location for work other than a single, regular place of work, but costs somewhere between nothing and £20 for most people. If one is carrying goods for work, even just dropping something off on the way home then that requires Hire and Reward which is quite a lot more expensive. I make sure all my employees have the relevant insurance in place, I do not ask any of them to carry goods so there is no requirement for them to have Hire and Reward. For any mileage that they do for business I pay them 45p per mile which is the maximum HMRC allow before classing it as taxable income. All employees have work laptops, due to data protection they are not allowed to use them for personal purposes, no personal email, no games, no storing personal files, no streaming etc.

B0bbyEwing said:

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. 

If any of my employees were behaving like that they would initially get a verbal warning, it is not professional behaviour, but as I only employ fully functioning adults I do not have to deal with those kinds of antics. 

B0bbyEwing said:
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 am the same, friends and family have jobs, they do not want me messaging or calling them during the day just as I do not want them contacting me during the day, or message and I or they can reply at a convenient time. That being said many people have little impulse control, ability to delay gratification or common sense which is why they also use phones whilst driving.

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

I agree, I sometimes struggle to separate the two because it is my own business, evenings working when I realise that it is midnight and I need to go to bed, but equally I do not expect employees to work outside of office hours. If I was contacting an employee about something work related outside of hours there would be a valid reason, it would be important and urgent, not just on a whim, I doubt anyone rational would be able to deem it pestered. 

B0bbyEwing said:
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.

Then the frequency of contact should be very low to zero, but for a whole host of reasons it would still make sense to have a reliable form of contact which is what a mobile generally is. It could range from "the office has burnt down, do not come in on Monday" to "Jimmy has come down with tuberculosis, you need to get tested immediately". If they will never need to contact you then why take the deliberately confrontational route of refusing to give your number?

You only employ "fully functioning adults" yet ban them using the work laptop for personal purposes due to "data protection"? Really? What "data protection" issue is there if an employee uses their work laptop for internet banking, for personal excel/word documents etc?

I can understand not allowing software to be installed, or clogging up the laptop with thousands of personal photos/videos. but any "fully functional adult" would understand what sort of usage would compromise the laptop. If I have to have a work PC at home using my electricity and my broadband, them I'm going to use to use it for personal use. If I was office based I would leave my laptop at work if I wasn't able it to use for personal use, unless I was being paid to be on call. Why would I take it home? 

You are aware that some websites host malware that can infect visiting computers and compromise security, especially if you can trick the visitor in hitting the "ok" button? The risks are low but arent zero, one of the major London NHS trusts couldn't do routine blood tests for over a month because their supplier's systems had been bricked by some ransomware. 

We'll never publicly know how they managed to get the ransomware in but its technically possible to be that someone was trying to buy their ESTA for their next holiday on their work laptop and was tricked into going to a scam website that infected the systems. It's simply not worth the risks and also why most work laptops cannot read USB memory sticks etc too. 

Most my clients provide a free guest wifi so if you do want to bring in your own tablet or laptop to do your ESTA during your break they've the connectivity to allow you to do so. The guest network is segregated so were you to infect your machine it couldn't spread to others. 

As to why take the work laptop home... what happens when your trains are cancelled? Or your kid is sick? Or the office suffers a power cut? Having your work laptop at home means you can continue to work and get paid if you unexpectedly cannot get into the office for some reason. Indeed there was an uproar with a client many years ago because there was a minor fire in the building but the water had damaged all the infrastructure so it would be months until it could reopen so everyone was told to work from home... other than 60% or so of people had left their laptop in the office so couldn't work. With no working lifts or fire alarm etc people had to be escorted up the stairs to the 15th floor (or wherever they worked) to retrieve their device and then the poor facilities person had to walk up again to whoever the floor the next person worked at. 

zagfles

MattMattMattUK said:

zagfles said:

MattMattMattUK said:

B0bbyEwing said:

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. 

For context I have been on the other side as well, fifteen years of working for other people, eleven years of working for myself, six of those employing staff as well.

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

It shows a total lack of engagement with the business. I do not ask that staff make themselves available for customers outside of work hours, I do that myself. Very occasionally I might need to urgently clarify something with an employee outside of hours because I need to sort something for a client, probably only once every couple of months, so a staff member might get contacted on something work related once or twice a year. A landline is not really a great form of contact, especially as many people are out of the home after work.

I do not think anyone of employment age does not have a mobile these days, some people might have a dumb phone, but I do not think I have met anyone in the last decade, even the most technophobic, who do not have a mobile of some description. 95% of all UK adults have a smartphone, even in the group with the lowest adoption, over 65s, 79% of them still have a smartphone, amongst under 55% it is 99%, amongst 55-64 it is 88% and the reality is that those without are them are probably not engaged with employment. 

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

It might not, but the for work part is still very important. Many people do not add commuting to their policy, Class 1 Business Insurance is needed if one is to drive to any other location for work other than a single, regular place of work, but costs somewhere between nothing and £20 for most people. If one is carrying goods for work, even just dropping something off on the way home then that requires Hire and Reward which is quite a lot more expensive. I make sure all my employees have the relevant insurance in place, I do not ask any of them to carry goods so there is no requirement for them to have Hire and Reward. For any mileage that they do for business I pay them 45p per mile which is the maximum HMRC allow before classing it as taxable income. All employees have work laptops, due to data protection they are not allowed to use them for personal purposes, no personal email, no games, no storing personal files, no streaming etc.

B0bbyEwing said:

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. 

If any of my employees were behaving like that they would initially get a verbal warning, it is not professional behaviour, but as I only employ fully functioning adults I do not have to deal with those kinds of antics. 

B0bbyEwing said:
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 am the same, friends and family have jobs, they do not want me messaging or calling them during the day just as I do not want them contacting me during the day, or message and I or they can reply at a convenient time. That being said many people have little impulse control, ability to delay gratification or common sense which is why they also use phones whilst driving.

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

I agree, I sometimes struggle to separate the two because it is my own business, evenings working when I realise that it is midnight and I need to go to bed, but equally I do not expect employees to work outside of office hours. If I was contacting an employee about something work related outside of hours there would be a valid reason, it would be important and urgent, not just on a whim, I doubt anyone rational would be able to deem it pestered. 

B0bbyEwing said:
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.

Then the frequency of contact should be very low to zero, but for a whole host of reasons it would still make sense to have a reliable form of contact which is what a mobile generally is. It could range from "the office has burnt down, do not come in on Monday" to "Jimmy has come down with tuberculosis, you need to get tested immediately". If they will never need to contact you then why take the deliberately confrontational route of refusing to give your number?

You only employ "fully functioning adults" yet ban them using the work laptop for personal purposes due to "data protection"? Really? What "data protection" issue is there if an employee uses their work laptop for internet banking, for personal excel/word documents etc?

Yes, my business works with sectors which have very strict data policies, huge amounts of work I do is covered by very strong NDAs, we have to have three tiers of protected data storage for some information and most of our customers also have blanket bans on personal use of work devices. 

The reality is, from either an employee or an employer situation no employee should be storing personal files on a work device, that creates a whole host of data protection issues because it is employee personal data that the business then controls and has access to.

zagfles said:

I can understand not allowing software to be installed, or clogging up the laptop with thousands of personal photos/videos. but any "fully functional adult" would understand what sort of usage would compromise the laptop.

Do people understand, because the amount of people that get caught out by fake websites, fake banking websites, fake shopping websites, fake DVLA websites etc. 

zagfles said:
If I have to have a work PC at home using my electricity and my broadband, them I'm going to use to use it for personal use. If I was office based I would leave my laptop at work if I wasn't able it to use for personal use, unless I was being paid to be on call. Why would I take it home? 

That might be you, but I doubt most people are bothered by the 1-2p an hour it might cost to use a work laptop at home if they needed to. Most people take a work laptop home to allow them to work from home on occasion, either planned in advance, or unplanned, or to go home early for some reason but keep up to date with work later in the evening. Many people also like to advance their career rather than sit in some pit of anger constantly raging at their employer so might choose to do the odd bit of work in an evening to get ahead in life. I have gained projects, promotions and new jobs, all leading to greater remuneration by doing the little bits when it makes a difference, regardless of if that is during work time, or taking a quick call in an evening and doing a bit of work out of normal hours. 

I'm not bothered by the cost. It's the principle of some hypocritical boss telling me - use your personal stuff for work, but you can't use company stuff for personal use. Let us intrude on your personal time by phoning you at home, but don't dare do any personal stuff at work. Not going to happen. I'm all for flexibility, but it need to work both ways, otherwise it's like any abusive relationship when it's all give one way and take the other. I'm not working for an abusive boss any more than I'd put up with an abusive partner. I have some self respect. 

Like I said earlier, we soon saw off any managers who were like that. We weren't stupid enough to think you need you suck up to get ahead. We didn't "rage" or "sit in a pit of anger", we just said "no" until they saw sense. Which never took long.

Many years ago there was another department at my old place which had a different culture, they did oncall for almost free, they were constantly called out of hours, people there typically exceeded the 48 hours WTD limit regularly. There was a spate of redundancies - the other department got hit harder than us. Why? Because the company knew the remaining mugs would cover the work by working more, they knew we wouldn't. 

Personally I've had a great career, I've been privileged to have jobs working in great teams who've been recognised by customers and management as providing an outstanding service. I loved the 24/7 nature of the job, we got handsomely rewarded for providing out of hours cover through shift premiums and oncall payments, and despite people often thinking doing shifts/oncall mean you're working long hours, the hours I worked including callout was generally less than 40 hours a week average, less than most of my friends who did supposed 9-5 jobs. Because we had properly resourced shift/oncall rotas, because we insisted on it. Managers soon realised if they treat us well they'll get a great service service from us, if they expected us to suck up and do what we're told, it'd be them not us who'd be out of the door 

vacheron

MattMattMattUK said:

vacheron said:

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.

I think your post makes sense if you are of the opinion (which it certainly appears based on your replies above) that employees are lazy, paranoid, difficult, troublemakers whereas management and / or business owners are nothing but generous benevolent benefactors. 

You seem to have got the wrong end of the stick, though based on your other posts I suspect deliberately. 
I recognise that good employees work well, bad employees do not, good managers improve employees working lives, bad managers do not. A business relationship is transactional, an employer pays for an employee to do a job, not for them to be on social media, the business gains from productive work, the employee gains from remuneration. I have worked with people who did the absolute minimum not to get sacked, sometimes below the minimum, but dragged out the process, made up health issues, refused to leave their phones alone, I have also worked with people who were badly treated by employers when they had genuine issues. There are bad employers, there are bad employees, but equally there are good employers and good employees. 

vacheron said: 

However in reality the oppisite is often the case, and while I myself often use my personal mobile for work purposes, the reason I do so is because I am not "obliged" to do so, and nor does anyone have the right to demand that I do. 

Your work having a contact number for you is not requiring you to use your personal phone for work purposes. 

vacheron said:

For the record, I am not talking about the boss or colleagues ringing to tell you something important or ask a quick question from time to time. I am talking about the phone being the thin end of a wedge to slowly and persistently intrude into someone's personal life. As the OP has previously had a company mobile which is being removed, I find it very hard to believe that this will result in an immediate reduction in the times they are contacted in this manner in the future.

People only use the "the thin end of the wedge" argument when they do not have a rational position for the current position. Something could change in the future, but that does not mean it will or is likely to. If an employer were constantly contacting me outside of work hours then I would tell them to stop calling me, not answer and/or change jobs.

vacheron said:

Yes, using a phone or laptop costs little, but calling and taking up an hour of someone's time outside of working hours or while they are on holiday asking if they could just "pop on your laptop" to send some info or look at something.has a significant cost, both in terms of unpaid hours and people's personal lives. 

You are exaggerating. Taking a 30-60 second phone call is not a significant impact on someone's life in any way. It would help if you dropped the hyperbole.

vacheron said:

Would a business owner be happy working for a client for free on the basis that the laptop they are using during the meeting "costs very little to run"?... thought not. 

That is a straw man argument. Businesses pay other businesses to do a job or task, they except that business to have the adequate equipment. They are more often than not paying for the skills rather than the equipment itself. If a company allows an employee to access company data on their personal laptop and an employee chooses to then that is fine. I would not expect an employee to be compelled to use their personal laptop for work, equally as an employee I and anyone not deliberately combinative with their employer was not bothered about using their laptop for five minutes to check something. 

vacheron said:

This may sound paranoid to you, but I have seen this happen many times in my career, and have even seen a marriage fail because one of the couple could not ignore the persistent call from work. Sometimes the managers involved don't realise, sometimes they just don't care, and yes, this has been a minority, but regardless the risk is not zero.

I have seen employees performance managed out because of their inability to stop going on social media, I have seen employees sacked for gross misconduct because they refused to do their job, there can be bad elements on both sides and your comments do sound paranoid, combative and hyperbolic. If we did not do things for every risk that was above zero we would never do anything in life because everything, even just getting out of bed had a risk (as does staying in bed). Anyone sensible would manage the issues as they arise, rather than creating a whole series of paranoid "what ifs" that might occur under some weird ideas of what might happen that they had created in their head.

While I appreciate your responses, and different opinons are always welcomed, the OP clearly had concerns in their very first post about providing their personal phone details to their company.

You mentioned above that you would not expect an employee to be compelled to use their personal laptop, which is great, however it is when they are compelled when it becomes a problem.

Both of our opinions are based on what we have witnessed in our respective personal experience. However nobody knows more about the particular situation or culture of the OP's specific employer than the OP themself, and (paranoid or not), they appear to be very uncomfortable in providing this.

The only question the OP asked in their first post was:

Just wondered if you can fairly say no to a personal number request?

To which I replied:: 

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,

... which I don't beleive was an un unreasonable response.
I then cited a direct example of how our employees without company phones had been specifically instructed that they HAD to use their personal devices as part of the company IT security policy which had been suddenly implemented with no prior consultation .


Your response to my post firstly justifed why you felt personal device use was not an issue because "contracts are all you can eat and electricity consumtion is small" (implying the employee would be working using their own device in their own home) This was exactly my point that management look at the cost implications rather than the intrusion into the employees personal lives via devices purchased by the employee specifically for that use.

You then went on to state  "If an employee refused to supply their personal mobile number then I would not employ them" and referred to those who might refuse to use their own personal devices as part of your company IT security policy as "paranoid types" on two separate occasions.

Now I would have let all this ride, but you then went on to casuallty mention that you had also threatened an employee with "being performance managed out of the business*", a highly unscrupulous management practice which can be extremely mentally damaging to the employee, and in many cases, illegal. In my 30 year career, I have never known a good manager who has resorted to this callous method of "dismissal", let alone voluntarily admit to it!

I hope you can now understand why, after reading all of the above combined, that I felt the need to present an opposing viewpoint of how managers can often have skewed opinions of what they consider "justifiable" business practices..... comments which you subsequently called "paranoid, combative and hyperbolic".

While I am sure we will never agree on this matter, I remain of the opinion that if someone wants to refuse to reveal their personal mobile phone because they feel from their own personal experience that they will be obliged or compelled to use it against their wishes, purely for the financial benefit of the business, then they should not be persecuted for doing so if an alternative method of contact for HR purposes is available.



*For those that don't know what being "performance managed out of a job" entails, I'll let google do the talking:

"Performance managed out of a job" means an employee is essentially pushed to resign from their position through a series of deliberate actions by their employer, often involving negative performance reviews, reduced responsibilities, increased scrutiny, and other tactics designed to make their work environment so difficult that they feel forced to leave, even if their performance isn't objectively poor; essentially, being "managed out" without a direct termination. 

Key points about being "performance managed out":

• Frequent negative feedback, even for minor issues
• Being excluded from important meetings or projects
• Micromanagement and excessive monitoring
• Reduced workload or responsibilities
• Lack of recognition or praise for achievements
• Being passed over for promotions 

• Potential legal considerations:
  While not always illegal, depending on the specific circumstances and the employer's actions, "managing out" could be considered constructive dismissal in some jurisdictions, which could allow the employee to pursue legal action.

DullGreyGuy

vacheron said:
The only question the OP asked in their first post was:

Just wondered if you can fairly say no to a personal number request?

To which I replied:: 

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,

... which I don't beleive was an un unreasonable response.
I then cited a direct example of how our employees without company phones had been specifically instructed that they HAD to use their personal devices as part of the company IT security policy which had been suddenly implemented with no prior consultation .

Let's ignore time whilst at work as there is no evidence in this case that the OP is expected to use their personal phone when in the office. The fact they only talk about not wanting to be contactable in their personal time to me suggests this isnt a both in and out of work time issue. 

My former employer has 20,000 staff of which 16,000 are call centre agents and of them about 2/3 are on basic salaries with the remainder on better salaries. Without exception we held a mobile number for each and every one of them. The main purpose for which was in the event of a disaster recovery situation we could instruct them not to go into the office but either work from home or go to the recovery site. In principle in a more serious situation it was also a care check so not just saving the person from a potentially hazardous trip to a closed office but to ensure they "survived" the event.

On exceptionally rare occasion it may be used for other purposes in a work related emergency, and in most cases it's an emergency because you did something stupid. In my time in the same call centre we had 1 DR test message and 1 phone call, my g/friend of the time worked there longer than me and she had 1 DR test message and no phone calls. 

No, I dont think it's reasonable for a company to pay for 16,000 additional telephones and contracts if you are likely to only be getting 1 text a year. I think it is responsible of them to have a system to save people from hazards. Yes we had some staff who were reluctant to give their number in case they were bombarded with calls, maybe some gave us a fake number or didnt update it when they changed contract but in the DR test it would have gone fairly far when they failed to respond but short of someone turning up at their doorstep. It's also an area with high turnover of staff and due to GDPR we weren't allowed to recycle telephone lines.

Lets put it another way... are you happy to pay an extra £5 a year on each of your insurances just so you can know the call centre agents are having a phone that is likely never to be used but it saved them having to give their personal number out?

zagfles

DullGreyGuy said:

vacheron said:
The only question the OP asked in their first post was:

Just wondered if you can fairly say no to a personal number request?

To which I replied:: 

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,

... which I don't beleive was an un unreasonable response.
I then cited a direct example of how our employees without company phones had been specifically instructed that they HAD to use their personal devices as part of the company IT security policy which had been suddenly implemented with no prior consultation .

Let's ignore time whilst at work as there is no evidence in this case that the OP is expected to use their personal phone when in the office. The fact they only talk about not wanting to be contactable in their personal time to me suggests this isnt a both in and out of work time issue. 

My former employer has 20,000 staff of which 16,000 are call centre agents and of them about 2/3 are on basic salaries with the remainder on better salaries. Without exception we held a mobile number for each and every one of them. The main purpose for which was in the event of a disaster recovery situation we could instruct them not to go into the office but either work from home or go to the recovery site. In principle in a more serious situation it was also a care check so not just saving the person from a potentially hazardous trip to a closed office but to ensure they "survived" the event.

On exceptionally rare occasion it may be used for other purposes in a work related emergency, and in most cases it's an emergency because you did something stupid. In my time in the same call centre we had 1 DR test message and 1 phone call, my g/friend of the time worked there longer than me and she had 1 DR test message and no phone calls. 

No, I dont think it's reasonable for a company to pay for 16,000 additional telephones and contracts if you are likely to only be getting 1 text a year. I think it is responsible of them to have a system to save people from hazards. Yes we had some staff who were reluctant to give their number in case they were bombarded with calls, maybe some gave us a fake number or didnt update it when they changed contract but in the DR test it would have gone fairly far when they failed to respond but short of someone turning up at their doorstep. It's also an area with high turnover of staff and due to GDPR we weren't allowed to recycle telephone lines.

Lets put it another way... are you happy to pay an extra £5 a year on each of your insurances just so you can know the call centre agents are having a phone that is likely never to be used but it saved them having to give their personal number out?

It doesn't have to be a mobile for stuff like emergency contact. I've got an ansaphone on my landline (VOIP) which will email me if I get a VM, if I'm at home I'm far more likely to hear my landline than mobile, my mobile is quite often on silent eg if I've been in a meeting etc and needed to mute it and forgot to unmute. Even if it isn't on silent it could be in another room and I won't hear it. My wife doesn't have an ansafone on her mobile, doesn't want it, if I know she's at home I'll always phone the landline because that's more likely to get a reply. 

vacheron

DullGreyGuy said:

vacheron said:
The only question the OP asked in their first post was:

Just wondered if you can fairly say no to a personal number request?

To which I replied:: 

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,

... which I don't beleive was an un unreasonable response.
I then cited a direct example of how our employees without company phones had been specifically instructed that they HAD to use their personal devices as part of the company IT security policy which had been suddenly implemented with no prior consultation .

Let's ignore time whilst at work as there is no evidence in this case that the OP is expected to use their personal phone when in the office. The fact they only talk about not wanting to be contactable in their personal time to me suggests this isnt a both in and out of work time issue. 

My former employer has 20,000 staff of which 16,000 are call centre agents and of them about 2/3 are on basic salaries with the remainder on better salaries. Without exception we held a mobile number for each and every one of them. The main purpose for which was in the event of a disaster recovery situation we could instruct them not to go into the office but either work from home or go to the recovery site. In principle in a more serious situation it was also a care check so not just saving the person from a potentially hazardous trip to a closed office but to ensure they "survived" the event.

On exceptionally rare occasion it may be used for other purposes in a work related emergency, and in most cases it's an emergency because you did something stupid. In my time in the same call centre we had 1 DR test message and 1 phone call, my g/friend of the time worked there longer than me and she had 1 DR test message and no phone calls. 

No, I dont think it's reasonable for a company to pay for 16,000 additional telephones and contracts if you are likely to only be getting 1 text a year. I think it is responsible of them to have a system to save people from hazards. Yes we had some staff who were reluctant to give their number in case they were bombarded with calls, maybe some gave us a fake number or didnt update it when they changed contract but in the DR test it would have gone fairly far when they failed to respond but short of someone turning up at their doorstep. It's also an area with high turnover of staff and due to GDPR we weren't allowed to recycle telephone lines.

Lets put it another way... are you happy to pay an extra £5 a year on each of your insurances just so you can know the call centre agents are having a phone that is likely never to be used but it saved them having to give their personal number out?

I completely agree that you should be able to contact your employees in an emergency situation, which is why I emphasised each time that the employee should not be compelled to use their personal phone for the "day to day financial benefit of the company".

This would exclude emergency situations like those you describe which are most likely using data held and distributed in a confidential and controlled manner by HR, and where the call is primarily for the wellbeing and benefit of the employee and/or the safety of others.