November 17, 2011, 2:34 PM — "Mobile employees" -- defined as "pretty much every knowledge worker with a smartphone" -- work more hours than their non-mobile counterparts and get less sleep because of their devices, according to a quarterly survey by an enterprise mobility services vendor.
The "Mobile Workforce Report" by iPass finds that 95% of mobile workers have smartphones, and 91% use them for work (that's up 26% from 2010).
And that's a good thing. At least for The Man!
"Today’s mobile employees are critical to the success of every enterprise, contributing 240 more work hours a year than their non-mobile counterparts," said Evan Kaplan, president and CEO of iPass. "Connectivity is essential because work is no longer where you go but what you do."
By my math, 240 more hours a year is about an extra hour each workday. But from where are these mobile workers getting the extra time to devote to their jobs?...
One in three mobile employees claimed that they sleep less due to work and one in four mobile employees sleeps less than six hours a night.
That can't be good, or so every doctor and mother in the world would argue.
Further, iPass says that more than half of the 2,300 survey respondents "reported that they exercise erratically or not at all," and that "60% attributed lack of exercise to work."
Wow. If something like that were happening to me, I'd be resentful toward whatever was causing it. And yet...
The report also found that mobile employees are emotionally attached to their smartphones – 59 percent would feel disoriented, distraught or lonely if they were without a smartphone for even a week.
Distraught if they were without the very device that subjects them to the perpetual tyranny of the workplace? Sounds like Smartphone Stockholm Syndrome.
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