In the age of smart phones, Facebook, Instagram and Snap Chat, people are glued to their technology 24/7. We’ve collectively lost our way in terms of etiquette. You’ve seen it. People bumping into each other on the street because they have their heads in their iPhone or Android device. A busload of people with ear buds locked in, hand clenching phone and completely zoned out. It can all look like one big science project where man and machine are becoming one!
Not only have we all seen these behaviours, we’ve all lived at least one of them at some point. But this post isn’t about social norms or how technology is denigrating our society. No! This is a career blog after all. I’ve also never majored in Sociology even though if I were to do a PhD, that would be my subject matter – but I digress.
What I’m here to talk to you today is about how you can make small adjustments at work in your social behaviour to see huge gains in your reputation at work, both as a hard worker and a more likeable employee. For many, these often unspoken social office norms are not easy to pick up automatically. It takes time, experience and reading social queues. And, as you can imagine, they overwhelming relate to technology.
Some might argue that office etiquette is contingent on specific company cultures. I see it as organizations having different tolerance levels for these five actions one should never do at their desk. Universally, I believe adhering to these principles will always make you more likeable in your workplace. And as we have touched upon before, more likeable people get the promotions – so listen up!
So without further adieu, here are the 5 things to never do at your desk to make it to the corner office:
1. Treating your desk as a buffet
This one particularly bugs me – people eating at their desk. On the surface, this may seem like brilliant multitasking. You are getting your work done while feeding your body its daily requirements of protein, carbohydrates and fats (hopefully good ones). Multitasking inherently is a bad strategy for productivity. This includes eating and working at the same time. Studies have even shown that multitasking is literally killing our brain. If you are going to do something well, you have to do one thing at a time.
I’ve also found people correlate neat desks with competency and intelligence. Eating food at your desk doesn’t help matters.
Instead: Take 10 minutes out of your lunch and go to your break room to get your mid-morning snack. Not only will you enjoy your food more (because that will be your focus!), you will be much more productive when you get back at your desk with a focus on the task at hand.
If you must: If for whatever reason you can’t carve 10 minutes out of your lunch for a snack break, drink you food. That’s right – have a protein shake, a smoothie. Anything that is less involving than using a fish knife to cut through last night’s halibut leftovers.
2. Closing off the rest of your workplace with headphones
I admit it – this one was hard for me to give up. But I’ve managed to do just that at my current job. While rocking to Linkin Park or nodding your head to Kanye West can round off the edges of your workday, and might not be as counter-productive as managers think, decision makers’ perception of your productivity (or lack there of) matters more than your actual productivity. I’ve found that many people envelope their world at work with headphones or ear buds to cope with a job they aren’t totally happy with.
Instead: Open yourself up to your environment and start to interact with people around you. You will be more approachable and can use this as an opportunity to network.
If you must: If you are in early in the morning or stay late without your manager or many colleagues around, I think listening to music is acceptable to help you push through a more difficult than usual work day or repetitive tasks.
3. Playing with your phone
This one is likely the worst of the bunch. It goes back to what I mentioned at the beginning of this article. On average, a smart phone user checks their cell phone an average of 1500 times a week. That’s no typo – 1500 times! Do you really get 1500 messages a week? Probably not.
Unlike eating, when someone is playing or checking their phone, they are not multitasking – they are completely unfocused from the task at hand. This fixated on checking push notifications to smart phones has become an epidemic. So much so that a book called iDisorder has been written about phantom phone vibration syndrome – where people believe their phone is vibrating due to a notification when, in fact, no messages were actually received. Imagine the new heights in your productivity if you were to simply disconnect during the workday.
Instead: Leave your phone in your work desk (locked). The messages will still be there when you get around to checking them.
If you must: If you can’t go cold turkey, set a designated time during the day to check your phone and limit yourself to 10 minutes of use.
4. Surfing the web
Surfing the web during work hours is similarly problematic. Your focus is completely diverted and you are wasting time – both yours and the company’s time. No organization wants to pay employees to surf the web if it’s not relevant to their work. If you need to use Google maps for a minute or look up the occasional trivia question that is gnawing at your mind (who is the actress that plays Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones again?), I get that. I’d also venture to say that very few senior managers and other captains of industry ascended to their positions by sitting at their desks, reading the latest TMZ article or checking for cat memes on Facebook.
Instead: Like I mentioned in my first article, you can stand out from the crowd just by asking for more work when you are at loose ends. You might not be able to improve your Candy Crush Saga score on Facebook, but in the grander scheme of things isn’t probably not going to matter compared to your career development.
If you must: Use your web surfing time to look up relevant sites and articles related to your job and career path. Take that time to investigate the pros and cons of certification. Look at trends in your industry. This will give you ideas for next steps that you might otherwise have not considered.
5. Don’t violate your employment agreement for internet use
You’d think this is a no brainer but for many it is not. For one, many people do not actually read the fine print in their employment agreement that stipulates what you can and cannot use the internet for. Secondly, some people just don’t think it’s that big of a deal. When I was a manager, I once discovered an employee was pirating music using a file-sharing program they had downloaded on a company PC. When I raised this with them, their first reaction was not “This was a lapse in judgment” but rather “How am I going to get my music then?” There was no sense that this was something you shouldn’t even think about doing over a company’s internet connection.
There is no exception to this rule. Just don’t.
And remember… Don’t expect perfection from yourself overnight. It takes 66 days to form a good habit for the long haul. If you aspire for great things, a little over 2 months is not an insurmountable challenge for you. In that time, you might be surprised how many of these tenets become second nature to you.