Make personal calls during work hours? Think twice!

You might want to think twice before making another personal call during work hours.

Companies can now buy a service that automatically analyses phone calls made by office staff, figures out which are for business and which are personal, and delivers a monthly list of repeat offenders directly to top management.

"If you're making a 30-second call every morning at about 9 a.m. and the number doesn't match those used by your colleagues then we can guess fairly accurately that's your spouse," said Robert Picton, product manager at South African IT firm Dimension Data.

Picton says that although other IT companies offer call analysis technology, Didata is the first to translate that information for managers.

Didata says a company can cut its phone costs by 10-15 percent by using the 'Guardian' monthly service, not to mention hours of manpower saved through increased productivity.

Employees might bristle at the thought of managers monitoring calls. But Didata says the system focuses only on those who run up huge bills or spend hours of work time on personal calls, and says no one listens in to the calls themselves.

"Obviously it is acceptable to make a few calls home," said Picton. "And this is about the minority who are spending 12 hours a month on the phone for non-business purposes and running up bills of $114.7.

上班時間打私人電話可得“三思而后行”了。

公司現在可以買到一種能夠自動分析辦公室職員們所打的電話的服務，這種服務可以分辨出哪些是公務電話，哪些是私人電話，而且每月能向管理層提供“屢犯者”的清單。

南非IT公司Dimension Data的產品經理羅伯特·比克頓說：“如果你每天早上9點鐘左右打一個30秒的電話，而且你所撥打的號碼不是同事們的常用號碼，那么基本可以確定，這個電話是打給情人的。”

比克頓說，盡管也有一些其它的IT公司提供這種電話分析技術，但Didata則是首家能將數據信息轉化為能直接上報給經理的名單的公司。

Didata說，采用這種“電話監視”月服務可以使公司的電話費減少10%至15%，更不用說工作效率的提高所節省的人力時間了。

雇員可能會對管理層實施電話監控的想法產生不滿。但Didata公司稱，這個系統僅針對那些電話費狂高及經常在上班時間打私人電話的員工，并稱電話的內容不會受到監聽。

比克頓說：“很顯然，打一些私人電話是可以被接受的。這一措施主要針對的是那些一個月能打12個小時的私人電話，電話費高達114.7美元的少數人。”