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Top1. Introduction
Mobile phones have diffused through the global population with breakneck speed (Middleton, 2007). It is predictable that they will be used in the workplace, especially with the significant recent improvements in their functionality over the last decade. Consider the fact that the popular mobile phone ten years ago was characterised by the ability to open up – the so-called clam shell phone was in great demand. However, a new era of mobile phone functionality was ushered in by Apple in 2007, with their release of the iPhone smart phone, a device that allowed owners to access the internet from their phones. According to Pew Internet1 (2012) 45% of Americans now own smart phones that can access the Internet and take photos.
The next step, using these devices to work while on the move was, perhaps, entirely predictable. Many 21st century employees work outside the formal office environment for a significant part of their working day (Worthington, 1998). Smart Phones have had a major impact on people’s working patterns and modalities and even on their travelling habits (Line et al., 2011). A report commissioned on behalf of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (Honan, 2012) reported that 65% continued to work on Smart Phones or other mobile devices once outside the office; working for an average of 2 hours 34 minutes in this way. This is made possible by the increasing capability of these devices and means that previously “dead” time spent travelling or waiting can now be utilised, enhancing employee productivity and maintaining the employee’s focus on business activities. This has changed in a very short space of time. In 2007, Lyons et al. carried out a survey of rail passengers in the UK, and the majority, back then, reported that electronic devices they carried did not improve the time they spent travelling. Fewer than 20% of their respondents reported working while travelling and only 20% of business travellers carried laptops. One could reasonably expect a very different response now, 6 years later.
Working on the move is seen as a positive trend by many organisations and their employees. Jain and Lyons (2008) write positively about the fact that travelling time can now be perceived as a gift rather than a pain. A number of surveys and questionnaires, including one by Good Technology, reported that 93% of respondents continued to work outside of the office, with 38% believing that their job would be impossible without at least mobile access to email.
There is surely a downside to all this mobile working. There are certainly concerns about the blurring of the home/work boundary and the balance between rest and work as work encroaches more and more on employee personal time (Gant & Kiesler, 2002). The other concern is that there is a risk associated with mobile working. There is a growing concern that workers will be observed while working on confidential documents on the move, and that leakage thereof could harm the organisation. In a recent survey conducted for Secure, The European Association for Visual Information Security2, 98% of organisations surveyed believed it was important to educate individuals on the observation threat and 32.4% said they had no confidence that users would make the effort to prevent information from being observed when working in public places.
That information does leak can be demonstrated by a two examples. Secure reports that the Vice President of an S & P 500 company took the time during her flight from London to New York to work on her company’s profit forecast for the following 6 months. Soon after she landed, a newspaper that was going to run a “Splash” on her forecast in the next day’s edition phoned her. A leak had come from the person in the neighbouring seat who happened to be a journalist. She had had plenty of time to appraise the information herself and to contact her paper with an analysis immediately upon landing.
In November 2008 a civil servant in the Department of Business fell asleep on the train while working on his laptop on documents marked with the security level ‘Restricted’. This event was captured photographically by a fellow passenger and led to a story in the Daily Mail newspaper (Owen, 2008). In the first case the information was merely leaked, in the second it was captured as well.