Phone ban at work - childcare worry

[s88]

My manager has recently implemented a phone ban in our office .

This is due to new starters taking advantage and being on them more than they should be. Ruining it for everyone else.

My worry now is that I have a 2 year old in nursery 3 days a week and if there was an issue with my child,the nursery would not be able to contact me.

We do not have a direct phone number in our office for them to call on only a premium rate number which you are on hold for around 20 minutes.

I do not think I am being unreasonable to want my phone , on silent, even restricted if need be, to be able to be reached by my childcare provider .

Am I being OTT or valid point?

Provide the nursery with you managers mobile number

This is an acceptable solution, or a contact within HR. Either way, they will be able to get you within seconds/minutes if there is a genuine emergency with your child. Don't risk your job by trying to hide a phone.

Plenty of people cannot have phones at work under any circumstances, or are working out of range or cannot answer a phone during working hours. What about someone like a fire fighter - when they are all kitted up in helmets, gloves and breathing apparatus, they aren't able to keep an eye on their phone.

Also people who work in prisons or other secure locations such as special hospitals, or people who work in remote areas out of range. Not being able to have a phone on you at work is not an unreasonable hardship, illegal, or discrimination.

It is unreasonable when there's no reason other than a jumped up boss flexing their muscle 'cos they can. The OP didn't mention neurosurgery or fire fighting.

Not being able to have a phone on you at work is not an unreasonable hardship, illegal, or discrimination.

It is, however, an issue if there's no alternative way of being contactable if you may need to be contacted in an emergency.

If you can't have a mobile on you because you work in a school, prison, fire station, hospital, shop floor etc - there will almost certainly be a landline at your workplace that a childcare provider will be able to contact you on if there's a genuine emergency.

When worked ina box office call centre we were not allowed mobiles but there was a direct dial landline that went through to a line manager for emergency use.

Also the emergency contact doesn't have to be a parent.
It can be a friend. It can be another member of family.

And if I sent my child to a school with a ridiculous policy of 30 minutes otherwise SS would be involved, I would tell the school to get a grip and stop bloody wasting SS time. Thankfully though, my school have more common sense, and didn't go running to SS when no-one could find me and it took longer than 30 minutes to get hold of me.

I have an app on my mobile called Pushbullet which flags up calls on my internet browser and also lets me answer texts. I can't remember if I had to install something on firefox but that may be an option. It does work through walls too as my phone sometimes is 2 rooms away in the house and it still comes up. It lets you know who has called within a minute or two of getting the call at the most, often simultaneously. I often use this as although I'm the boss (freelancer) I often have my mobile set to silent so I can work.

Would your work let you do this? It might even work in tandem with a smart watch linked.

The employer needs to work with you to find a solution. Giving one managers landline is a bit iffy too as what happens if they are ill/holiday/lunch/driving etc.

can an alternative number be given - eg your manager's mobile/direct line - for emergencies?

I work in a hospital and although I have my mobile when I'm in my office, I don't take it into clinical areas. My admin can still find me if she needs to.

I work in the NHS so mobiles aren't allowed in my department anyway (infection risk). We do have a main landline phone in our department for calls to come in from childminders etc. I was called once, when my son was 2, as he had the start of chickenpox. He is 12 now (no calls since)!

Work should provide a number (not a premium rate) for things like this.

I agree with most. Not being able to have your phone on you at work, is absolutely reasonable and pretty sensible in a lot of work places as long as there is a number that people can call for emergencies - normally it would be the work's landline, but as you don't seem to have one, then it would have to be something like a PAYG 'office number' that stays in your workplace.
Trouble with giving your manager's number is that, sods law dictates they would bee off work on the one time it was ever needed.

Hide it on you somewhere on vibro, if they search, oow, left it home.

Nearly every single contact centre in the UK doesn't allow mobile phones on the floor. It's pretty normal and acceptable.

Would you want people recording your card details via their phone as they ask for payment? Or taking pictures of data? No didn't think so. It's perfectly acceptable and not discriminatory to ban phones in a office.

There should be a HR number, how do you phone in sick? do you contact the premium rate number? I don't think so

Just give nursery a duty phone number or HR number surely?

Companies have legal obligations to protect customer data in certain office environments and have to ban mobile phones. If your personal circumstances dictate that somebody needs to be immediately contactable by a school or nursery you would have to put alternative arrangements in place. It's nothing to do with money-making or shareholders as suggested further up the thread 😕

The OP didn't say it was about protecting data. She said it was newcomers talking too much, so manager decided unilaterally to ban phones. So it's not data protection, it's making people work harder. Shit way to manage if you piss off the good workers because you have no imagination for other means to get new people off their phones.

My point was to illustrate its not against any bodies human rights or illeageal to ban phone usage on work, it's actually the norm now thanks to smart phones. Productivity is higher when people aren't facebooking all day, that's all.