Company policies vary on employee use of corporate mobile phones
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By Anni Lassila and Jyrki Alkio
Who gets a mobile telephone from his or her boss? Is it all right to use a company phone to vote in the Eurovision Song Contest? Is it a good idea to answer the phone at all during holiday travel?
These are questions that many employees are pondering, especially on the threshold of their summer holidays.
One in seven Finnish employees has a telephone linked to his or her job. Even more have a work phone which is used only during working hours.
A company phone is a perk that is subject to taxation. As the employee is able to use the phone for private calls as well, the tax authorities have decided that the phone constitutes the equivalent of EUR 20 in extra pay, which is added to the taxable income of the beneficiary.
The tax authorities say that regularly-priced calls and text and multimedia messages are part and parcel of the perks of the job.
There is no precise definition of how many private calls can be included. For all other paid services, such as taking part in the televote for the Eurovision Song Contest, for instance, the user should pay a separate tax. However, the private use of a data link is not seen as a taxable benefit at all.
Based on a round of calls made by Helsingin Sanomat, there is considerable variance in the instructions given by companies and other organisations on the use of company phones, and the monitoring of how they are used.
Most employers have blocked the use of paid entertainment services.
For some, the use of services such as the purchase of travel tickets, or the use of entertainment applications, is checked at random and in retrospect. A “modest number” of telephone calls are usually permitted, but what that amount is is usually not defined in very great detail.
For instance, the airline Finnair has set very precise guidelines on the use of telephones, blocking services, and the types of connections, including possible data packages.
Each employee’s needs for services are considered separately. Finnair has listed the services that employees are not allowed to use their company mobile telephones for.
Tecnomen, which employs 85 people in Finland, has few instructions. Telephone bills are high in any case for the company, whose business is mainly international.
“Individual bills can sometimes be in the thousands of euros, if a telephone conference of about two hours is held in Brazil, for instance. There have not been any problems about the amount of private use”, says financial officer Tuomas Wegelius.
For instance, keeping in touch with one’s family during business travel is accepted.
In many companies the subject of private use is taken up if the phone bills are seen to be exceptionally high.
The pulp & paper company UPM-Kymmene has “alarm thresholds”, which lead to investigations if they are repeatedly exceeded.
At Finnair, the employee is called to task over bills exceeding EUR 250 in a two-month period. If necessary, an explanation is asked for.
There are no set limits at Nokia, because the bottom lines on phone bills vary according to how much an employee travels. During holidays, companies follow the same, somewhat vague, principle of “reasonableness”.
At the company Alekstra, which focuses on analysis and consultation on the telecommunications services used by companies, CEO Toni Toikka says that as a rule there is much to be desired in the telephone policies pursued by companies.
When acquiring a subscription, the differences in the job descriptions have not been sufficiently taken into consideration.
Some employees get unnecessarily extensive data and minute packages.
On the other hand, employees who might benefit from newer services in the business do not always get good enough equipment for the job.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.5.2008
ANNI LASSILA AND JYRKI ALKIO / Helsingin Sanomat
anni.lassila@hs.fi, jyrki.alkio@hs.fi
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| 27.5.2008 - THIS WEEK |
 Company policies vary on employee use of corporate mobile phones |
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