Question:

Lately I’ve noticed that my employees spend way too much time texting when they should be working. Can you give me some guidance regarding text messaging in the workplace? I am not sure what I can and cannot do to prevent my employees from texting at work.

Answer:

Text messaging (or “texting”) has grown so quickly in popularity and has become so pervasive that it has become part of our workplace culture. Some recent statistics regarding text messaging demonstrate how incredibly popular it has become in the last several years:

More than 70% of wireless users (or more than 200 million Americans) have an SMS (or “short message service”) package for their mobile device that allows for short text messages to be sent from one device to another.
The use of text messaging increased by 107% in 2009.
Approximately 2.5 billion text messages are sent each day in the United States.
More text messages are now sent via cell phone than calls placed with those same phones.
Employers can adopt a policy prohibiting text messaging at work. If text messaging continues, you can discipline employees for violating the policy because, as you note, employees who are texting while at work are not working. Because of the prevalence of text messaging, even if you ban text messaging during work hours, you should put some guidelines in place that address texting in the workplace and require that your employees comply with them.

For instance, you should have a policy in place that prevents the sending, receiving, or displaying of messages or images (email, text, or otherwise) on personal mobile devices if those messages or images could be considered harassing, offensive, pornographic, or disruptive to other employees. Your policy should explain that “offensive” content includes anything sexual in nature, as well as anything that might offend someone on the basis of