Briefs

Advertiser Staff

Wary workers use their cells at work

Workers aren't worried about making personal phone calls at work, but many are calling friends and family with their own cell phones instead of the company circuits.

A recent Maritz Poll found that 44 percent of American wireless subscribers use cell phones at work for personal calls. Sixty-three percent of those are men.

"With companies cutting back on and monitoring employee telephone use, wireless subscribers are finding a way around the system," said Paul Pacholski, division vice president of the Maritz Telecom Research Group.

"In a sense, the old 'smoke break' is being replaced by the cell phone break."

Of the 803 people polled by Maritz Research, 53 percent of wireless subscribers said they used the cell phone at work for personal reasons. Fourteen percent said it was for something work-related while 33 percent said they use a cell phone "about the same" for business and personal matters.

Women were more likely to use their cell phones for personal calls (64 percent) than men (42 percent).

Early to work does not always pay off

Despite the popular maxim, the early bird doesn't always get the worm.

Workplace early birds who prefer to put in their overtime hours before the start of the work day don't get the same recognition for their efforts as those who work later into the evening after most people have left the office, according to Management Recruiters International.

MRI, a Cleveland-based search and recruitment firm, polled office workers and their managers to find out which people received recognition for putting in extra time at the office.

"Despite the fact that putting in the extra time — whether it be in the early hours of the morning or late at night — potentially leads to greater productivity, workplace early birds do not reap the same rewards, promotions or acknowledgments for their efforts," said MRI president and CEO Allen Salikof.

"It's simply true that more notice is taken of people who work late than of people who come in early."

You don't really have to give notice

Giving two weeks' notice to quit is common, and workers seemingly forever have assumed they have to make such an announcement to management.

But Palmer Suk, owner of Snelling Personnel Services, a Tysons Corner, Va., recruiting firm, said that is certainly not the case legally. Just as management, in an at-will work arrangement, can fire anyone for any reason or no reason, as long as the dismissal is not based on illegal discrimination, so can a worker leave by simply quitting.

But Suk said that from "a career standpoint," there are good reasons to not be hasty about walking out the door. Even when a worker leaves with a sour taste about the employer, it is entirely conceivable that the worker might return there at some point.

"If you left on bad terms, you think, 'Why would I want to go back?' But it does happen. Time will heal all, and some issues are soon forgotten," Suk said.

"If you can, you want to do as little bridge-burning as possible. It's best to go out with your head up."