Techno-pop invades the cube, and beyond

By Mary Helen Gillespie, 3/20/2006

The technophobe Savvy Manager's latest hitch: employee usage of personal mobile devices and how organizations need to address, or at least be aware of, how even a ring tone on a personal cell phone might impact the culture of the workplace.

This isn't just a human resources issue, either. Depending upon the device or the utility, information technology and security as well as individual managers may need to team up to discuss appropriate processes when the gadgets come out.

Because the reality is that just because a co-worker is walking around with a piece of plastic cord popping out of one ear and jiggling a juiced-up notebook under one arm does not mean he or she is in compliance with company policies.

And we all know that the last thing an organization needs right now is another rule, another regulation, another memo, or another anything. It does not matter what kind of job is being filled: The minute the winning candidate walks through the personnel door, the first things they are told to read and sign are the firm's technology and sexual harassment policies.

Senior management sends and enforces especially strong messages about the proper use of company equipment and property. Yet many companies understand that there may be appropriate personal uses of the organization's electronics and make sure their employees understand that the employer will be the ultimate judge on that issue.

So if you lose your job because of inappropriate use of your employer's equipment, you are basically very stupid and deserve to be fired. Agreed?

Despite the burst of the Internet bubble, media and technology continue to find new ways to deliver their entertaining and educational as well as functional devices to an eager marketplace. This is why 9-year-olds have their own cell phones with rainbows and pony decorations on them.

With this merger of content and channels comes lower prices and greater demand. Coupled with the autocratic but necessary technology policies of most employers, this also explains why so many folks are walking around out there with the company Blackberry, the personal and the company cell phones, and various other forms of electronics: yours, mine and ours.

So here's where things get sticky: The employee plays by all the rules on the company equipment but has downloaded a ring tone, via VerizonWireless.com, of "Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It "(edited) by Dem Franchize Boyz for the personal device.

If the cell phone happens to have photo capabilities, why, wait, there's more. Let's start with screen savers, wallpapers and other downloads of the 2006 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar. It appears that supermodel Elle Macpherson sadly lost her bikini top in the ankle-high waves just as the camera clicked. Thank goodness, her long Miss Piggy-like blonde tresses were there to save her modesty.

Well, voila. Before I could type this next paragraph, we had an issue with the swimsuit issue. A certain male member of my family has a long and valued affinity to the SI Swimsuit calendar. This legacy, over the years, has become part of the Gillespie family tradition (the rest of which is basically linked to the Roman Catholic church, the Boston Red Sox, and my mother's Lithuanian recipes).

So after I found this website, only as part of intense research for you, dear readers, I forwarded the SI Swimsuit URL along to the home e-mail addresses of four male adult relatives with a single, snippy, feminista comment worthy of being the only girl in the tribe.

My husband, who for the record is not the calendar fan, was one of the recipients. And as allowed by his company's generous employee policies, he was checking his home e-mail at work on his employer's computer - one of those huge Macs with a screen the size of a drive-in movie - and Ka-BONG! There were suddenly palm trees in Dorchester.

His return e-mail to me lashed out about:

1. How very glad he was that no female interns were standing behind him when he opened the URL.
2. He assumes his company monitors e-mail.
3. And I quote: "Best advice, don't go there."

So, as we can see, this is a real issue: techno-enabled pop culture invades the cube, and beyond.

As senior management struggles to find an appropriate balance of work/life technologies, it may also want to take into consideration the foibles of family members who make stupid assumptions about technology use and then really, really hope their loved ones don't lose their jobs over a simple bathing suit and some coconuts.