So you made it out of the 2008 financial crisis?  And you’re still managing to get by in this economy? You really can’t afford to hire more staff and you are really busy. So why would you want to create a cell phone policy for your HR manager to enforce and every employee to sign? I’ll give you three reasons.

An ounce of prevention

Since we live in the most litigious nation on the Earth you’ll want, no you need, to protect your business. For example, a South Carolina driver struck and killed two bicyclists because she was using her cell phone while driving a company vehicle. The settlement was $2.5 million.

A few McDonald’s employees in Arkansas thought they would have fun with a customer’s cell phone; that is, post pictures of his nude wife from the cell phone online before returning it.   Three million dollar lawsuit filed.

Do your employees know they are or can be tracked by GPS?  I’m not just talking about company vehicles, but company-issued cell phones. This can be considered an invasion of privacy (especially after hours).

Keeping costs under control

These examples are just to protect your business from a lawsuit. Here are a few more reasons to have a cell phone policy for cost control.

When a salesman leaves a company, he or she often will work for a competitor or even start their own business (barring the terms of the noncompete contract). But who gets to keep the cell phone number? Consider how much easier it is to keep your customers’ business when you own all of the phone numbers for them to get in touch with your staff?

While the costs of cellular plans are trending down, data usage is going up. More of your staff want the Smartphones and the data plans. That means you need to define who gets the iPhones and more expensive data plans. Also, it might be common sense to you and me not to text friends or download games (on the company’s bill) all day long, but employees need to know they’re not allowed to download games to their cell phones. This keeps them productive and protects you if there is a dismissal since you had them sign a cell phone policy about this…right?

One more thought. The Smartphones (BlackBerry, Droid, iPhones) are really just small computers. These computers have proprietary e-mails, files, pictures and passwords to websites on them. What are you doing to prevent these computers from getting lost? What would you do if all of this information were posted on the Internet or given to your competitors? Employees should report lost phones ASAP, and a policy should be in place on how to proactively protect the data.

Despite all the conveniences cell phones bring us, managers and business owners would be remiss to forget the headaches they can bring, too. By creating a cell phone policy you are setting expectations for employees and controlling operating costs.

Dan Aylward is owner and senior telecommunications consultant of Abilita, in Lansing. Abilita is a full-service telecom consulting solutions provider. Aylward has helped businesses reduce technology costs and assists with improving business productivity.