Mobile devices in the workplace - Research Paper Example

This paper seeks to explore the use of mobile devices in the workplace. It aims at determining the level of use of mobile devices during office hours and the effects of such application on effectiveness and efficiency of employees’ output. This is because of the emerging trend in technology that increasingly develops the mobile devices. These devices are also technologically capacitated to offer services that were previously available on computers only. While low portability of computers would previously limit such application in the workplace, the current mobile devices allow employees, while on duty, to access recreational services.

The problem promises a worse situation from the trend in manufacturing and sale of the mobile devices. There was for example an almost 90 percent increment in importation of mobile devices from the fourth quarter of the year 2009 to the same period in the year 2010. The increasing competition among the many manufactures of the devices also predicts increase in utility that will attract more of employees’ time to the mobile devices. In the year 2010 for instance, more than 40 percent of employees used mobile devices for texting and this percentage is expected to have currently exceeded 50 percent (Notifycorp, 2010).

Such trends pose both adverse and beneficial impacts on organizations. While they facilitate communication among members of the organization and may be used to facilitate official communications within organizations, the mobile devices, especially when used for personal applications, consumes a lot of organizations’ time, in quality and quantity (Notifycorp, 2010). The applications such as social networks and entertainment distract employees leading to loss of productivity time at personal levels.

While cumulative employees’ application of the devices leads to a general lost time at the workplace, some employees’ applications may be a hindrance to other employees to adversely affect their output levels (Lussier, 2011). This research report therefore intends to change the trend in application of mobile devices in the workplace. It shall achieve this by statistically identifying the adverse impacts of application of the devices for adequate managerial decision making for controlling office use of mobile devices towards improved efficiency and effectiveness of employees.

The developed ideas promise a deeper insight into human resource management through identifying significant inefficiencies due to application of mobile devices. This will lead to developed policies towards a more dedicated labor force. The research’s major limitation is, however, employees’ negative attitude on the research that may lead to dishonest responses. As a result, the true impacts of application of mobile devices may not be established. Proposed task The investigation proposes to employ a quantitative research approach.

Under the method, the task will involve a series of steps that will begin with establishment of a theory, from reviewed literature. The proposed theory is that, application of mobile devices reduces productivity in the workplace. The theory will be followed by development of research hypothesis. This will be followed by designing the research before developing data collection instruments. Sampling will then be done followed by data collection and data analysis towards conclusion and a final documentation of the report (Bryman and Bell, 2007). The