At a time when at least one-third of American households have dropped landlines altogether, old-school phones are still “very important” to Americans at work. That’s according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center that explores attitudes toward technology in the workplace.
Pew found email far outweighed phone technology of any kind in importance, according to more than 1,000 American workers surveyed. Some 60% of people polled called email “very important” at work, compared with the 35% who described landlines as “very important,” and 24% who said cell phones or smartphones were “very important.” About 54% of those surveyed called the Internet “very important,” while just 4% called social publishing sites like Facebook “very important” at work.
Of course, it all depends on what you do for a living. Office workers (68%) were far more likely than non-office workers (26%) to call the Internet “very important.” (And, for what it’s worth, only about 7% of those surveyed said the Internet has made them less productive at work.) Gender plays a role, too. Men were nearly twice as likely as women to call smartphones “very important” in doing their jobs.
But just because a technology is used doesn’t mean people like it. Though landlines remain indispensable to more than one-third of those surveyed, plenty of workers prefer text messages to phone conversations.
Earlier this month Coca-Cola ditched the voice messaging system at its Atlanta headquarters. The soft drink giant gave employees the option to keep voicemail for “critical business” needs, according to Bloomberg. Just 6% of workers opted to keep it.
