“The NTSB found that the Sept. 12, 2008, collision of a commuter and freight train, which killed 25 people, was caused by an engineer who sped through a stop signal as he was texting. The engineer, who died in the crash, had been warned about cellphone use twice before.” USA Today
And so it goes. This crazy texting/cellphone addiction isn’t just limited to train engineers. Techno addiction is a cancer in this country and especially so with the twenty-something generation that you likely draw your technicians from.
Hopefully you are in agreement with me that yakking/texting on a cellphone while working in the customer’s home is a huge NEGATIVE Moment of Truth! And yet … trust me, every day carpet cleaning technicians are ticking home owners off big time doing exactly this! So how about your company? Do you KNOW what your techs are doing out there? Do you think you should? Or even more importantly…
How can you keep your young techno-addicted employees from texting on their cellphones when you can’t be on top of them 24-7? Simple. You can’t! Sure, you can rap their knuckles and say, “Now don’t make personal phone calls in the customer’s home! And don’t text either!”
Folks, give me a break. Telling your employees not to make personal phone calls on the job is the equivalent of me locking up a heroin addict in a home with a big drug stash and saying, “I’m going to be gone all day. Now don’t you do any drugs while I’m gone!” Give me a break!
Here is what some of our Strategies for Success members have been doing. (Bear in mind if you implement this idea you WILL encounter employee resistance.) When your employees come in to work each day:
1.They turn in their personal cell phones to the receptionist who will monitor their phone for emergency calls and if needed will contact them in the field.
2. In turn the employee picks up a company supplied cellphone which has been blocked so that it can ONLY receive and make calls to and from the office.
3. Now the employee can contact the office and if needed the office can patch them through to other business and, if absolutely necessary, emergency personal calls too.
BUT the key here is YOU are in control of the employee/homeowner transaction instead of an immature worker that is hopelessly addicted to his cellphone. And that should give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside!
How does the receptionist monitor the employees calls without answering personal phone calls? Sounds like an invasion of privacy to me and I think it would be hard to attract quality employees with a policy like that.