As employers ban phone use while driving, long car commutes mean lower productivity

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As employers ban phone use while driving, long car commutes mean lower productivity

by Ken Archer • September 12, 2012 12:18 pm

More and more companies ban employee use of cell phones while driving. Will these companies begin to view employees with long car commutes as less available and productive than other employees? Will this push more workers to take advantage of transit options?

Photo by bjosefowicz on Flickr.

Some companies still have a 9-to-5 culture and don't expect employees to be available outside those hours. With the ubiquity of cell phones, however, many people see commute time as potential work time. When conference calls go long, it's not uncommon to hear participants announce, "I've got to leave, but I'll rejoin this call from the road." Email-enabled smartphones have only increased this trend.

But driving while on the phone can be very dangerous, studies show. And juries have found corporations liable for traffic crashes caused by employees using cell phones for business purposes, even when neither the car nor the phone were issued by the company. Some awards from judges and juries have exceeded $20 million.

This started a trend of corporate bans on employee cell phone use while driving, which shows no sign of going away. Such bans could catch a lot of employees by surprise who count on working while driving. Many workers in Northern Virginia, where my software company is headquartered, justify long car commutes by the work they get done on the phone while driving.

When car commuters suddenly fall off the grid for 45 or 60 minutes each way, unable to notice urgent calls or to continue conversations from the road, will they be viewed as less flexible than their transit-commuting colleagues, especially as Metro finishes its project to add cell phone service for all carriers in all tunnels?

Drivers banned from using cell phones will find transit a better option to stay productive. When I'm on the Fairfax Connector bus and the Orange Line, I flip open my laptop and tether to my phone for internet access. Conversely, the few times I have driven to Tysons Corner, I have been frustrated by the time I wasted in the car.

We are considering a ban at our company, and fortunately my colleagues don't attach a stigma to transit commuters. But that could be because I am a co-founder of the company, and play a greater role in defining our workplace culture. Bosses and coworkers at other workplaces are known to roll their eyes at leaving during a meeting to catch a bus, while considering car breakdowns and traffic jams valid excuses.

Bans on phone use while driving could also affect decisions on corporate office locations, and on home purchases by employees and executives. Buying a home 45 minutes away from one's workplace will take on new consequences when you will lose 90 minutes of productivity per day.

Northrup Grumman selected a car-dependent suburban office park over Ballston for its DC-area headquarters in 2010, over the objections of younger employees who prefer transit. As corporations increasingly ban cell phone use while driving, the inability to communicate with employees immediately before and after work could discourage suburban, auto-dependent office relocations.

How would stereotypes be affected by such a ban at your workplace? Do you feel that your colleagues attach value judgments to car commuting vs transit commuting? Is the stigma on transit commuting limited to bus commuters in the suburbs?

The ability to stay connected on transit presents a clear advantage over isolated drivers. You might wish Metro would ban people who yell into their cell phones, but transit commuters can use their time on trains and buses to work safely.

25 comments

Tags: cell phones, commuting, distracted driving

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Is Metro accessibility a factor for Northrop Grumman? (Apr 28, 2010)

Ken Archer is CTO of a software firm in Tysons Corner. He commutes to Tysons by bus from his home in Georgetown, where he lives with his wife and son. Ken completed a Masters degree in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America.

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Yep, we're back on the Fake Trend New York Times Watch.

by charlie on Sep 12, 2012 12:43 pm • link • report

Hopefully the companies that ban cell phone use couple it with increased telecommuting flexibility. If you can do it while driving you can do it at home.

by Jim Titus on Sep 12, 2012 1:00 pm • link • report

Considering we only got used to widespread cell phone usage within the past 15 or so years, I imagine people will adapt pretty quickly to not having them again.

by Gavin on Sep 12, 2012 1:12 pm • link • report

So buy "working" while driving are they then spending 6 hours in the office rather than 8 (assuming a one way hour commute)? Because I'd have a hard time accepting that as an employer regardless of my thoughts on safety.

And as an employee I'd rather not spend all of my time being connected to work unless that's the nature of my job (like being a doctor).

by drumz on Sep 12, 2012 1:14 pm • link • report

@drums: Maybe someone works 7:30-4:00 but there is a conference call from 3:00-5:00 because Pacific coast employees and late arrivals planned meeting.

by Jim Titus on Sep 12, 2012 1:26 pm • link • report

What's wrong is that there is this notion that people have to be available 24/7 for their job.

If a company has a 9 to 5 mentality, why are they objecting to their employees not picking up the phone during their commutes between 8-9 and 5-6?

When meetings go long, they were not planned properly or led properly.

by Jasper on Sep 12, 2012 1:30 pm • link • report

Apparently this is the way employment works now where you work like 10 hours every day and you're supposed to be connected 24/7 to your job so they can make you work at any time. And we wonder why there aren't enough jobs!

by MLD on Sep 12, 2012 1:32 pm • link • report

Jim,
I can understand special situations that are an exception rather than a rule like you described but I guess the thought that I could just do something like that while on the road never crossed my mind. If it were my employee I'd rather them come late or leave early some other day during the week and make up for it. (or god forbid, give them an hour of overtime if they're hourly).

Besides when you're talking on the phone while driving you're either concentrating on driving or concentrating on the phone call. It's like playing a game on your phone if you were in person. Except you can actually hurt yourself.

So yes, if you feel compelled to do work while driving in your car. Stop it. For all of us.

by drumz on Sep 12, 2012 1:47 pm • link • report

Back to the topic, creating the opportunity for more productive time is absolutely a reason that people ride transit:
http://www.transportchicago.org/uploads/5/7/2/0/5720074/frei_tc_website_posting.pdf
See page 8, table 3. Answers like "riding the train is a better use of my time/money," "I can read on the train," "I can call/text while on the train," "I can work on the train." Large portions of choice riders answer this way. Time on transit is your time to work, or mess around with a phone, or read a book. In the car you should be driving, though plenty of people don't pay attention and do other stuff anyway.

by MLD on Sep 12, 2012 1:57 pm • link • report

Here's another one about commuter buses in San Francisco:
http://www.sfcta.org/images/stories/Planning/Shuttles/Final_SAR_08-09_2_Shuttles_062811.pdf

Riding a shuttle may free time for doing work-related activities, if the shuttle is equipped with work-related amenities such as wireless connectivity. 92% of respondents indicated that they gain productive work time by riding the shuttle, which they reported totals at least 322,000 person-hours per year.

by MLD on Sep 12, 2012 2:06 pm • link • report

@drumz: Your first question seemed to merely ask who is cheating whom? My example where no one is cheating anybody somehow has led you to make inferences about me personally that go well beyond the scope of what I have written here.

Reading my two previous comments, all you can really infer, is that I think that employers who schedule meetings beyond someone's regular work day should let the employee go home early and take the call from home. That's win-win and need not be a function of how one commutes. Would you really prefer a rule that says: Transit riders, you can continue the call on the bus; cyclists and drivers you have to stay at the office late.

by Jim T on Sep 12, 2012 2:15 pm • link • report

Jim,

I'm sorry I didn't mean anything personal. That wasn't my intention. I was more trying to figure out what sort of boss would allow specifically working from the car (safety considerations aside). I would expect that any reasonable boss would allow working from home in that instance or allow the employee to flex out especially if said employee has child care commitments and so forth.

by drumz on Sep 12, 2012 2:22 pm • link • report

MLD -- interesting cites. Thanks. Tho I don't seem to see a lot of people "doing work" on transit when I ride it. The people who are reading stand out. (For me, at least on buses on DC-area roads, I can't read on buses smaller than big commuter buses because I get queasy. I don't have problem on rail, or for some reasons on the 8/48 in Baltimore City/County).

by Richard Layman on Sep 12, 2012 2:52 pm • link • report

No one ever of bluetooth?

So once all these workers get onto transit to "become more productive", we'll hear the complaints about "inconsiderate, self-important people" disturbing others' "peaceful ride".

by ceefer on Sep 12, 2012 3:15 pm • link • report

Yeah, on the city bus I don't see people doing much more than just reading e-mail on a phone. It's harder to do more work with a laptop because trips are short and you can't count on getting a seat. My coworkers who take commuter buses report that many people work.

@ceefer
All the studies show that talking on the phone is distracting regardless of whether you are hands-free or not. Holding the phone isn't what prevents you from driving, it's paying attention to the phone conversation that does. And the studies also show that paying attention to a phone conversation works your brain in a different way than an in-person conversation.

by MLD on Sep 12, 2012 3:21 pm • link • report

I don't see cell phone bans by companies becoming a major trend. However, cell phone bans as state laws are much more likely (many states already require use of a hands-free device but since that doesn't actually increase safety, the next step is an outright ban).

To all the people bemoaning the expectation that exempt employees work more than 8 hours per days...If your company chooses to follow a strict 8 hour workday, it will likely succumb to a competitor that works harder (assuming employees at both companies are roughly as productive). It's the reason that Olympic athletes train like crazy...it's the only way to win a gold medal.

France implemented the 35 hour work week to "create" more jobs. At first it was okay. Then they lost their jobs to the much harder working people China and India.

Also, jobs aren't zero sum. It's not like there X amount of work to be done in the world and it has to be divvied up among the global population.

by Falls Church on Sep 12, 2012 3:24 pm • link • report

I think the problem is a growing number of work environments see work as less of a "you work 40 hours a week" type commitment, and more of a "here is what you have to do this week" type of commitment instead. Many of my coworkers work more than 40 hours a week and think nothing of it, and many of my friends are in similar situations. You don't dare ask for overtime or flex time because no one else does and it's assumed the management will frown upon it. The need to work on the go is also increased by an office allowing flex time such as mine, where I may work 7-4 but others work 9-6, and we're working with agencies that also have people on flex time. To say "no meetings except between 9 and 4" does not leave enough time in the day to get all of the meeting in that need to happen.

That does lead to pushing off the part of the day where you need to call a client or customer to times when you can't be doing anything else productive to work, which is often commuting. My friends who take the MARC train love how much work they get done on the train with emails and conference calls, and likewise I know people who get most of their over the phone work done on the way home each day.

Thankfully my place of employment encourages the use of mass transit, however, i'm not sure if there was a ban on using the phone while driving for work calls that it would translate into a change in peoples commuting habits. I think it would instead just change peoples work schedules, probably for the longer.

by Gull on Sep 12, 2012 3:28 pm • link • report

Conversely, the few times I have driven to Tysons Corner, I have been frustrated by the time I wasted in the car.

Ken,
Please don't be frustrated. The car has gotten you to where you need to go and the time you spent, you know driving, has kept the rest of us a little bit safer :)

by JeffB on Sep 12, 2012 3:50 pm • link • report

Given the next article, I am curious on how exactly Mr. Archer gets phone calls done -- or for that matter internet use -- on the orange line.

by charlie on Sep 12, 2012 3:56 pm • link • report

So once all these workers get onto transit to "become more productive", we'll hear the complaints about "inconsiderate, self-important people" disturbing others' "peaceful ride".

Isn't it common on the longer commuter trains to implement work cars and quite cars?

by JeffB on Sep 12, 2012 4:01 pm • link • report

@ Gull: You don't dare ask for overtime or flex time because no one else does and it's assumed the management will frown upon it.

And that's where you need a union.

by Jasper on Sep 12, 2012 9:13 pm • link • report

The discussion will soon be moot. The notion of holding a product in your hand to make calls and access data will soon be a thing of the past. Consumer technology is 10 years behind military technology. Putting your web access on a contact lens and your phone embedded in your jaw with a phone the size of a large pinhead. is less than 15 years away.

by MikeR on Sep 13, 2012 9:31 am • link • report

@MikeR: Careful. Using such devices, the Government can control your thoughts; and attempts at shielding have proven to be ineffective.

by goldfish on Sep 13, 2012 9:50 am • link • report

@goldfish: Do you really think our being "careful" is going to slow any of it down? I remember the web 1.0... "Cookies!!! They will NEVER survive"

by MikeR on Sep 13, 2012 9:54 am • link • report

Also they aren't any safer than holding a phone in your hands.

The safety problem is the external phone conversation, not the physical object.

by MLD on Sep 13, 2012 9:54 am • link • report