I've just been given a work mobile phone, but in the past I've always given my personal phone number out to business contacts. Should I swap to giving them the new work number?
The reasons I hesitate are:
- I'd have to carry 2 phones around, which is inconvenient.
- I might lose track of my contacts in the event of changing jobs or being laid off.
- Using the personal phone doesn't cost me anything (I get a lot of free call time).
But the positives are:
- I can switch off the work phone when on holiday.
- I don't raise eyebrows by handing it back.
I only have the company phone because a colleague was made redundant and I inherited some of his duties, so it's not a special perk that's been bestowed upon me.
Also, I'm not really a 'switch off at 5:30' kind of person. I don't mind being contacted in the evening or at weekends. I'm building my career want to be helpful and available when people need me. Most are pretty respectful and don't call out-of-hours unless it's urgent. But I don't want to carry 2 phones around all weekend.
I know if I asked my boss or his peers (all of whom I get on well with), they'd say use the work phone and switch it off at weekends. They are very considerate of personal time. However, they are of a different generation to me - Over 40s and I'm 28. Part of me thinks that being available beyond office hours is going to be more expected in future as those of us who've grown up with mobile phones take it for granted.
So I'm undecided, and I need to order some new business cards soon! Any thoughts, considerations and advice from you all would be great. Thank you.
Matt
Forwarding is your friend
Consider having your personal phone forward to your work phone. During the week, etc, all your calls will come into your work phone. On vacation, only personal calls. If you want to "be on call" during a weekend, you can carry the work phone.
Definitely have your business cards list your business phone, not your personal one.
Bonus: if you leave your current employer, your personal phone still works for you!
John
I agree with John. And lucky
I agree with John.
And lucky you, Google Voice is soon to launch, and forwarding and all kinds of other services for phones will become much easier.
Mark
One thing to consider is
One thing to consider is what happens when you leave this position. From the company's perspective, all the contacts and documents on the phone you choose belongs to the company. Where I currently work, when an individual leaves the company a 'kill pill' is sent to the phone and the phone is reset to factory settings. All data on the phone connected to the company email system is lost; personal and company.
I also agree with John.
Larry
Thanks everyone...
Hi All,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Due to the unanimous advice, the business phone number will be going on the business cards. To work round my concerns I'm going to do the following:
1. Make sure I keep my printed contacts very up to date (as per layoff immunisation cast). Hopefully this will protect me against Larry's 'kill pill'. I can then contact them if the work number suddenly becomes unavailable.
2. Carry 2 phones at work - I'll leave my personal one on silent mode on my desk, which is probably a more professional way to behave anyway.
3. Leave the business phone on at home 'out-of-hours', but probably not take it with me when I go out. (That'll make the other half happier too). And I have the freedom to turn it off when on holiday (with an appropriate voicemail message, of course).
4. Investigate call forwarding options with my mobile phone provider and Google Voice
That should get round most of my issues, and I only really have to carry 2 phones on me when travelling to and from the office.
Thanks again to everyone for the advice.
Matt
BLUF: Carry multiple
BLUF: Carry multiple mobiles if you need to; Sync your mobiles to your work PC and, if you can do so without breaching your employer's security policy, to a home PC; Don't use your work phone for personal calls unless it's an emergency; Use distinct ringtones on each phone to be able to quickly tell which one is ringing; Think carefully about your company's culture before deciding whether to turn off your work mobile outside of work.
I regularly carry three mobile phones (2 personal[1] and one work, although one of the personals is the number I used to use for work before I was issued a work mobile). It's not unknown for me to have up to 5 mobiles (my 3 plus on-call mobiles and the like) on me, but that's rare. Once I got used to carrying multiple mobiles it was not that onerous.
My work phone (old Blackberry) is regularly synced to both my work PC and one of my home PCs so if it breaks down or gets taken off me I don't lose the contacts. I do keep a hard copy as well, plus a sync to my Gmail address book and Yahoo! address book. If you have the facility available to you and your employer's security policy allows it then syncing your phone address book to at least your work PC is a good idea. If it's stolen, lost or broken that can lose you your contacts as easily as Larry's 'kill pill'
Whilst my employer allows a reasonable amount of personal calls on work mobiles I'm very careful to use my personal phones for personal calls and work phone for work calls only. I've seem some pretty fluid definitions of reasonable. Even if your employer allows personal calls on work phones (whether you then pay for them or not) I'd recommend avoiding doing so except in emergency.
Each phone has a distinct ring tone so I can immediately tell which one is ringing. I recommend this to anyone with multiple phones. At a previous employer everyone on the team had an allocated ringtone (well, you could have the ring tone you wanted unless someone else already had it and which ever one you had no-one else could have) so we'd always know who's mobile was ringing.
Whether you leave your work mobile on when not at work is up to you and your company's culture. I leave mine on, I've known people who turned theirs off. Known, past tense, being the operative word. None of them were actually sacked, officially, for turning off their phone whilst not at work but it has sometimes been indicated as being the 'last straw that broke the camel's back' or given as evidence of an overall lack of engagement with the work environment. Like it or not, these days many employers expect us to be available outside of work hours. It's like showing up for team lunches, buying your share of cookies/doughnuts/cakes/whatever at appropriate times, making coffee/tea &c. It's not in your job description or contract but it shows that you're willing to participate.
Stephen
[1] They're on different networks (Orange and Three). I got the second phone when one of my friends and my sister both switched to the Three network. Calling Three from any other network costs so much (in the UK, unlike the US, the person making the call pays the full cost of the call) that I worked out it was cheaper to get a phone on the Three network just to call them than to pay the call costs to call from Orange!
consider a dual-active sim phone
if you are on the right type of networks you may be able to use a dual-active sim phone.
This gives you a single phone that has two phones in it. you can also choose to save contacts to either.
I unfortunately haven't been able to do it because my personal phone networks sim are not compatible with this type of phone.
Regards
Douglas.