Is it mobile compulsion or obsession?

In an era of 24/7 communication, the fear of being out of touch now outweighs the importance of focusing on the task at hand – and far too many meetings are interrupted or compromised by obsessive employees’ mobile devices. Yet simply turning the devices off during meetings is not the answer.

Using ‘telepresence’, individuals can opt to filter inbound calls, emails and IM and even pre-define an appropriate response. If an individual is in a meeting, for example, the messaging management technology can automatically deliver a message promising immediate response within a specific timeframe – or divert the call to a colleague.

Obviously, users cannot be expected to spend hours updating and amending messages. Instead, presence information is combined with preset filters to determine which messages are delivered, which are diverted and what response is delivered to the rest.

Simon Paton, Managing Director,
Communicate Systems UK