The research has found a high percentage of employees are still using their private mobiles for work because of misconceptions, distrust and lack of understanding by management of employees' real information and communication needs.

Renis Rahn, senior advisor and responsible for the in-depth study at Ericsson Consumer and Enterprise Lab, says employers today often let the wrong people have employer-paid mobiles. "Many white-collar professionals, often in senior positions, some with both low mobility and low information and communication needs, have their mobile usage paid by employers," Rahn says. "Meanwhile, as an example, we saw a police officer who was using his personal mobile to call both victims and colleagues. The mobile made his work so much more efficient that he was willing to pay for it himself."

But while employees would certainly like compensation, they are often afraid to "rock the boat", especially at non-management levels. Employees also do not want to risk having the employer tracking or seeing their personal calls.

And companies run great risks taking this free ride. "Employees gradually build up a list of customer and colleague contacts on their handsets, as they also begin using e-mail and even documents on mobiles. The security issues then become more acute and companies cannot control this when mobiles are wholly private-paid", Rahn says.

She says companies need to begin making policies on how personal devices are used for work. "Or better yet, companies could provide employees with secure devices that come pre-programmed with everything they need for work. Both employers and employees need to understand the possibilities of the billing systems on the market today. They easily separate private and professional calls and bring both privacy and security. Operators should work closely with companies to explore and develop these many options," Rahn says.

The research also found there are mobile functions that get very little use because the end-user thinks they are too complex to handle and remember; for example, storing numbers, speed dials, using voice commands, forwarding calls to another phone and so on. Rahn says the industry needs to reassess how to teach people to use these features. "When surveyed, people are very interested in these functions, but don't realize they have them already."

The question is what the industry can do to make the functions self-teaching. It's not about stuffing more functions into phones, but about making good use of the existing ones. "A similar function to the little paper-clip man on the PowerPoint screen could be one solution, as he gives suggestions on how to do things more efficiently," Rahn says.

The general conclusion from the study is that operators and vendors must understand the needs of people in each occupation – not only the work needs, but also the blend of work and personal life, and the entire mix of communication tools, whether they be fixed or mobile phone, computers or face-to-face contact.

The study involved respondents in China, Italy and the US in ten different occupations with high mobility, information and communication needs (for example police, utility workers, nurses, security and sales people). The study also used findings from global research Ericsson carries out every year, involving 8500 working people in 10 countries.

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