Seen as a valuable tool for mobile working, smartphones are a common sight among many professionals, but could be adding extra stress levels among the countries employees.
It is important to have a healthy work-life balance and flexible working can help people beat traffic and manage to get their kids to school.
Having a device which brings your work emails to you wherever you are can make it hard to switch the job off and mean that work encroaches into personal time more frequently.
Clear distinctions between the office and home are becoming blurred and this is mainly down to the digital revolution making it possible to work from anywhere.
More and more staff are effectively putting in extra hours for free without really realising they are doing it, as they are at home or out and about.
A report entitled The Well-being of the Mobile Workforce, which has been published by the Institute of Work Psychology at Sheffield University, examines the problem, reports Computer Business Review.
Dr Carolyn Axtell, who worked on the study, said the devices have some positive effects and allow staff to benefit from a more flexible working arrangement.
Being kept up to date at all times on work matters has encroached so much onto family time, Dr Axtell stated, that there have been instances of parents checking their smartphones during nativity plays in which their children are appearing.
A current issue in the smartphone world is that of patents and Apple Inc have just won a case against HTC Corp, which says they infringed one of the company’s patents, despite four having been disputed.
Dr Axtell told the news provider: “Professional workers have a history of overworking anyway, but I think the mobile devices exacerbate that. It’s almost too difficult to switch off; access is there all the time.”
