Do we want every single person out on the roadway driving around updating Facebook and closing business deals?

David Teater

Categorized in : Health News

I spoke to the New York Beer Wholesalers Association earlier this year, i love speaking to those groups, because every one of the people in the audience represents a different company with lots of employees so the message really spreads out.

It takes more cognitive resources to be engaged in a phone conversation than it does to be having the same exact conversation with somebody sitting across from you, if you are reading while driving, researchers say you are 3.4 times more likely to get in a crash than if you are not reading. Talking on the phone makes you four times more likely to get in a crash.

My experience has been when they understand the evidence and kind of just apply their own common sense to it, they very quickly come to that decision that this just isn't the best thing to do, it makes a lot of common sense to them when they hear it. They say, 'You know, I would never dream of reading a book and talking on the phone at the same time. Why do I think I can drive a car and talk on the phone at the same time when it uses the same skills?'.

He was my son, Joe Teater, he was the youngest of three boys, and... by David Teater

He was my son, Joe Teater, he was the youngest of three boys, and we miss him every single day.

If the employees buy into it ... then they start talking about it with their friends and peers, they get their family members to follow similar policies, and they take the practices home with them.

Being a former CEO myself and having probably spoken to hundreds of CEOs over the years and hundreds of companies that have put these policies in place, maybe thousands, I've never heard of, not only not heard directly, I've never even heard of a company saying 'we put this policy in place, and it hurt sales commissions; it hurt productivity; it hurt customer service,' not even one comment on that anecdotally in the last 10 years, which I think is amazing.

A technology solution is incredibly important. We need to take the temptation away from people before it happens.

You talk to any cognitive psychologist, they've known this for decades, that the human brain can only focus on one attention-requiring task at any given moment. The other task is always in the background.