Business Mobile & Personal Use

finisklin

Hello!

To those that are fortunate to have business mobile phones, I am wondering about how people manage with personal calls etc. and how companies allow for personal calls?

In particular, do people have two mobile phones, a business one and a personal one? Have people found that employers snoop around personal calls when the bills comes in or where you have your personal gmail on a business mobile phone how that works? Have people suffered an invasion of privacy?

The opportunity may arise for me to have a business mobile with email etc. and I am wondering should I use my personal number for business or just get a whole new phone and number etc?

Interested to hear people's experiences.....

goddevil

finisklin wrote: »

Hello!

To those that are fortunate to have business mobile phones, I am wondering about how people manage with personal calls etc. and how companies allow for personal calls?

In particular, do people have two mobile phones, a business one and a personal one? Have people found that employers snoop around personal calls when the bills comes in or where you have your personal gmail on a business mobile phone how that works? Have people suffered an invasion of privacy?

The opportunity may arise for me to have a business mobile with email etc. and I am wondering should I use my personal number for business or just get a whole new phone and number etc?

Interested to hear people's experiences.....

My employer got me an iPhone 4 a few months ago and i've been using it for personal and business use ever since.

The question of whether you need two mobiles depend on a lot of factors to be honest.

1. The most important factor is your employer. If your phone is added onto the business account, he'll have the ability to monitor your calls. Do you trust your employer enough to not worry about it.


2. Your personal usage. How much do you use your mobile for personal use and how much of it will be required for business use? You'd typically get a bill pay plan that will entitle you to 300 mins and 150 texts. You may also get free add - ons like unlimited landline calls and 1 gig data. If you think you'd use up most of it for personal use and you'd still be required to use the same amount for business, then you'd be better off getting a personal mobile. My monthly bill usually exceeds the normal bill 10-15 euros and my employer hasn't said anything to me yet. I've no idea who other employers may react.

3. The kind of work that you do. I work in IT and I'll mostly be dealing with emails with occasionally having to make calls. If you're working in maintenance and your number is with a property management companies, then you can expect to receive calls at all odd hours. Thus you may want to have your work phone switched off when you're not on call. In this case you'll have to get a personal phone.

4. If your employer is providing you a phone for being on call, then you must make sure that its fully charged for the time that you're on call. If your phone loses its charge due to your personal use, then you may end up in trouble.

finisklin

Fair insight.......not sure how much I will be using it for with regard to email and calls and even how much of that will be business. No way of knowing till the role kicks off. Will have a landline and I suspect it will be more emails.

Do you have your phone outside of business hours? How do you manage that...knock it off? I reckon that might cheese off the boss.....

godtabh

I've a work and personal phone. When I started here I could have got my personal number put on the work account but I didnt want to.

The work phone is turned off at 5 and back on at 8. There has to be a line

pow wow

At my last employer the bills were circulated to the relevant staff members when they arrived. The staff member would then highlight their personal calls and return the bill to the finance section with a cheque for their share of it. There was never any disagreement over what was business/personal use on either side.

Trial_Version

In my last job I had a business mobile which I could use for personal calls/texts/email. We were allowed an allowance of €30 for personal calls. Any amount above this was to be taken from our payslip, but the employer never took much notice of this.

In my current job we are entitled to use the phone for personal calls, but there is a cap on amount the phone can use to numbers outside the business. The cap is quite high though.

In both cases I've kept a personal mobile so I can turn the business one off.

Mrs OBumble

You need to think about the consequences when you leave the job, including what would happen if you left suddenly or got suspended while an issue was investigated.

If you only have one phone, and thats the only number all your friends know, or if you don't have the address book backed up somewhere that you can access without access to your work email .. then you could be in a very lonely and difficult position.

Even if it's not a sudden departure, if you're using the number for work use, it's a company asset: customers and suppliers are likely to know it, and any wise company will want to keep it not let it go with you.

For that reason alone, I'd say it's worth having two phones.