Mumbai: In an age where, the companies are trying to exploit the digital revolution by treating it as an advantage for their business prospect, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) is thinking other way around and imposing a ban on usage of mobile phones inside the offices.
In April 2015, ZEEL implemented the rule of no mobile phone in office of Zee Entertainment and from 16th July 2015, it was extended to other offices of all group companies, including Mumbai-based newspaper DNA.
With this move ZEEL has banned employees across all its group companies from using mobile phones in offices.
The thinking behind the move, according to an editorial employee at the company, is that “People tend to misuse social networking sites inside office.” Tools such as Whatsapp, while used for official purposes, can be distracting as it’s also used to chat with friends. “So management is trying to curb the unwanted usage of these platforms during work hours”, the employee explained.
However, the editorial departments of various news and current affairs media are using the whatsApp group among the journalists as a main source of news inputs. With this move the editorial department of Zee Group need to depend on their desktops only.
But such a policy will not increase productivity. “What might happen is journalists will find ways to stay away from reporting to office and work from outside”, the employee said.
Moreover, many employees also feel that they have been disconnected from various business associates and outer world during the office hours, as the alternate means of communications were not updated properly to many smaller level business associates, who are completely terminated from contacting the respective employee during the office hours.
Top officials at the Zee Group admit that the policy is facing a lot of opposition from senior managers in different group companies. “So the policy might not be there for too long,” one of them said.
Senior management people like channel heads are not reachable for comments on their strategies and new program line-ups thus reducing their scope of increasing the PR activity in the respective market.
