Smartphones sapping free time, survey finds

Always available tech ruining work/life balance?

If you want a better work/life balance then ditch your smartphone, because a survey has discovered that high-tech handsets can sap your personal time.

Workers with BlackBerry-esque mobile devices toil for - on average - an extra 15 hours each week, an analysis of over 600 employees by employment law firm Peninsula has discovered.

Those extra working hours are mainly due to the smartphone’s ability to allow workers to easily send and receive messages while at work or home, the survey concluded.

Peter Done, Managing Director of Peninsula, said employers should limit the amount of time their employees use smartphones for.

“Employees with smartphones are able to respond a lot quicker and also get themselves prepared for the working day ahead by checking their email first thing”, he said.

Smartphone sales have shot up in recent years, at the expense of less advanced handsets. Second quarter global sales figures – recently released by analyst Gartner - revealed that smartphones accounted for 40.9m of the 286m mobile phones sold during the three-month period. ®