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It's safer to punish the whole than to single someone out. It's not fair but it is what it is.
It's happened with my job - without getting into details, someone in another department was caught stealing work-related materials, they got fired, and I heard indirectly that upper management was going to start randomly monitoring all employee's computer activity at work, because of what this one person had done.
At my last job, IT guy came to install some equipment and he smelled like he had taken a bath in cologne. Someone must have complained because we got an email about a no fragrance policy. We used to like to burn candles in our office. Whenever we knew the district managers were coming, we would make sure we didn't have any candles burning.
The assumption here is that this new policy was established after one incident. Which may or may not be true. Perhaps this has become an issue with multiple examples.
That said - there are policies out there that make little sense. Or end up causing more issues than they fix. In this case, the policy doesn't really deal with the actual issue. Which seems to be too much downtime. Just my .02 of course.
In my case, I work as a security officer from 11 PM to 7 AM. Basically I just look through the building, checking to see if anything is amiss, make sure things are locked up and other than that it's dead as a door knob except from one other woman I work with who just watches YouTube videos and my boss who has a little office. So it gets very boring very fast, so I liked taking my phone and Switch to play on in the meantime.
At a previous employer, I was salaried and it was understood we could take an hour lunch. One guy abused it - long lunches, half hour smoke breaks, etc. Eventually we were told to take no more than thirty minutes to meet production quotas.
Unless they switched you to non-exempt employees, that was the wrong way to handle it. If the person in question was still getting their tasks done correctly and on time, then they weren't "abusing" anything. If they were not getting their tasks done correctly and on time, then that should have been addressed with the individual.
In my case, I work as a security officer from 11 PM to 7 AM. Basically I just look through the building, checking to see if anything is amiss, make sure things are locked up and other than that it's dead as a door knob except from one other woman I work with who just watches YouTube videos and my boss who has a little office. So it gets very boring very fast, so I liked taking my phone and Switch to play on in the meantime.
Are you supposed to be monitoring video feeds during the down time?
For example, where I work we have lots of down-time. We have things we are supposed to do but when we aren't we were allowed to pretty much do whatever until whatever else we needed to do came up which could be up to 20-30 minutes. Well, the other day a new employee started using her phone and even ignored our boss when she tried to talk to her. Apparently is really peeved her off because now she has been saying we can't use our phones or what have you at all. I actually found that out because while waiting for the next round I pulled out my phone and started checking my FB and she saw me and yelled "Put that **** up! That's not allowed anymore".
I later found out phones and such are now banned at all times. So basically, I just get to stare at a wall for a long time.
I get disciplining the offender, but why punish the rest of us?
Yeah, worked at a place that made control cables for MD aircraft. We could bop out to our tunes at all times, except when they fired up "Big Bertha" (Rotating hammer which produced 170 decibels of sound) well, one dolt decided to walk to the lunchroom wearing his headset and almost got run over by the forklift driver. There was a big sign that said "Remove your headset" but he ignored it....
So, there went our tunes. I guess we were lucky they didn't take away our "Sneak a smoke" times we'd finished 2-4 orders and run out for a smoke (by the side door)and then back in...But the loss of music sure did hurt.
back in the '80s, my company didn't have a limit on sick days; you took whatever you needed. But a few people abused it; a woman in our office would call in sick whenever her child was sick or she needed to run an errand--even though she had a stay-at-home husband.
So of course, a limit of 12 days a year was imposed. Still generous, but...
When I was new at my last job, I would get annoyed when we'd get emails that were obviously the result of one person; however, experience is the best teacher. After becoming a union steward, I understood why management did that. Makes it hard for employees to accuse them of arbitrary actions.
I get disciplining the offender, but why punish the rest of us?
The best way to handle such a problem, is to come up with a rule, that is universal. The next time that person that caused the problem pulls out their phone and starts using it, it is automatic grounds to fire the person breaking the rules. The rule also applies to all of the employees, which is what makes it possible to enforce with the offender, and sets a rule to keep others from doing the same thing.
Employment laws, and regulations say you cannot just pick on one person for using their phone, and fire them if they keep doing it, and not fire everyone that uses their phone. It has to apply to everyone, not just one person, or it can lead to a law suite or complaint to a government agency.
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