We take notes, we have eye contact

phone bans – At United Wholesale Mortgage in Michigan, a cellphone ban in meetings—paired with “privacy coves” for personal use—was built to bring focus back to work. The policy stands out because many companies instead lean on informal norms, and workers say phones can be

About ten years ago, employees at Michigan-based mortgage lender United Wholesale Mortgage started to notice a huge increase in the use of connected devices at work.

“From cellphones, all of a sudden, you have iPads, and then smartwatches,” says UWM’s Chief People Officer, Laura Lawson, who’s been at the company for 15 years. “It can become out of control.”

At the same time, the company began “questioning emails,” Lawson adds. Long threads felt unproductive, so UWM pressed for a different way to get through meetings and make decisions with less wasted time.

Then CEO Matt Ishbia made a decisive call: he banned cellphones from company meetings, and UWM has held onto the policy ever since.

“We take notes, we have eye contact,” Lawson says. “We are fully engaged…Because of this, we have more efficient meetings, more takeaways. It really creates an accountability for us to be fully in the moment.”

UWM’s approach has landed in the same spotlight as other high-profile frustrations. With recent news about CEOs at JP Morgan and Airbnb growing frustrated about their employees’ cellphone use in meetings. Fast Company looked into cellphone policies across offices and remote work. The finding was stark: not many organizations have official policies like UWM. and many instead rely on loose cultural norms that struggle to keep up with how phones function at work.

“Someone taking notes or pulling up a relevant resource looks identical to someone scrolling,” says Ceci Hajredinaj, CEO and Growth Strategist at consultancy Thryve x Design.

Phones, Hajredinaj and others say, sit in a tight spot—both distraction and tool. Leaders are forced to walk a narrow line between getting employees to focus and not stripping away resources people increasingly rely on throughout the day. The harder part is enforcement when phones are deeply woven into everyday work habits.

UWM’s phone ban doesn’t stop at the meeting room. The company has designated spaces. or “privacy coves. ” where employees can use their cellphones to make personal calls or check Instagram. Some resemble standard WeWork-style meeting rooms, while others look like actual telephone booths in the middle of the open floorplan.

While confining phone use to those spaces is not an official policy, “it’s more of a courtesy,” Lawson says. Employees, she adds, were encouraged that “if you’re at your desk, put your phone in your desk.”

The aim is to keep people locked in when they’re working so their workdays are maximally efficient—and they can still get home at a reasonable hour. “When you eliminate the distraction, you get your job done,” Lawson says.

At UWM, Lawson says the anti-cellphone culture has become ingrained enough that even when employees walk across the company’s more than two-million-square-foot campus, they “shouldn’t be walking on [their] cellphones.”

UWM remains an outlier. Even at Airbnb, where CEO Brian Chesky has noted frustrations around phone use in meetings, the company’s spokesperson said Chesky imposed a lead-by-example model rather than an official ban.

That difference mirrors what Hajredinaj saw earlier in her career. Before becoming CEO of her consultancy, she worked at enterprises including Morgan Stanley, PwC, and Citigroup between 2012 and 2023. “None of those organizations had a formal written cellphone policy,” she says. “What existed was a mix of unspoken norms, manager-modeled behavior, and the team’s conversation about expectations.”.

Theresa Fesinstine, an HR consultant, speaker, and adjunct professor at City University of New York, has noticed the same pattern. Even when companies spell out meeting etiquette, she says cellphone policies are rare.

“I have seen companies incorporate clarity [that’s] less about a cellphone policy, and more about how we operate during meetings,” she says. She’s spent her career reviewing employee handbooks and guidelines, and says policies that explicitly mention cellphones “maybe twice.”

Remote meetings may be where the conflict is hardest to contain. “Remote meetings. where participants face the countless distractions of at-home workspaces. may call for cellphone regulations the most. ” the piece notes. Michelle Sanguinetti. VP of People and Culture at the nonprofit Institute for Sustainable Communities. works remotely and said her company introduced “some structure around meeting norms” into its employee handbook. The goal, she says, was to “set the shared expectation of meeting etiquette.”.

That structure includes no phones “to minimize distractions,” she says, along with the expectation to be “camera-ready and focused.”

But not everyone is comfortable with that kind of control. One of Fesinstine’s examples comes from personal experience through friends: one friend working from home for a tech company said that if his work had such a policy, he would “probably look for a different job.”

For many employees, the objection is practical, not theoretical. Many Fast Company spoke with mentioned that leaving phones behind doesn’t always make sense. A friend at a health insurance company told on background that she wouldn’t work somewhere with a no-phone policy because she has kids and needs her phone present in case of emergencies. Others said that if they’re in meetings all day. they don’t want to leave phones at their desks in case something urgent comes up that doesn’t pertain to the current gathering.

Fesinstine said she would have embraced a no-phone meeting policy. but the alternative at her old workplace was inconsistent enough to sour the message. She described a boss who would use strong language to demand employees put phones away when he got fed up—but the next day he’d have his phone out during a meeting.

“It was a ‘do as I say, not as I do, context,’ Fesinstine says, and was not effective for commanding attention.

“I don’t think most companies do a great job,” she says about regulating cellphone use during meetings.

In meetings she facilitates, Fesinstine handles it by setting expectations at the top. “Now is the time where we’re flipping our phones over, and we’re not looking at them,” she’ll say. She emphasizes a “clear directive” for leading meetings with engaged participants.

But there’s a warning on the other side. Hajredinaj cautions that overly rigid rules can produce “compliance theater rather than actual cultural change”—the kind of behavior where people discreetly text on smartwatches instead of openly messaging on their phones.

The most effective methods Hajredinaj has seen for dealing with phone use during meetings, she says, are “a leader who models presence and creates meetings worth showing up for.” Sanguinetti agrees.

“What I have found is that context really matters,” Sanguinetti says. “In office or in a remote professional setting. the most effective approaches tend to be less about strict rules and more about clear expectations. leadership modeling the behavior. and creating a culture where being present is the norm.”.

Lawson insists that’s exactly how UWM works. She says she never sees CEO Matt Ishbia violating the company’s phone policy. “We have to lead by example,” she says. “In meetings, whether with my leaders or…I’m in a team huddle, cellphones are always away.”

When new employees join the office, Lawson said it can take a minute for them to adjust. To help, she will guide behavior. “If I’m in a meeting and there’s somebody next to me that’s on their phone,” Lawson says, “I’ll nudge them.”

Still, UWM’s style doesn’t land the same way with everyone. Employee reactions to meeting-time cellphone bans can go in different directions. Fesinstine described workplaces where distractions turn into “free for all” behavior, with constant ringing and pinging. Others. she said. can find strict policies condescending—frustrated that they feel they should be managing bosses’ rules rather than deciding what’s appropriate themselves.

Even so, there’s one reality all sides are forced to accept: people are increasingly entwined with their phones and other smart devices, using them on the spot to look up information, take notes, or work through problems. Hajredinaj calls a phone “a third arm.”

That point is backed by widely shared usage data: Consumer Affairs research from 2024 says 98% of Americans own a mobile phone. and they look at them. on average. 205 times a day. “The cultural reality is that for a lot of people, a phone is basically a third arm. It goes everywhere,” Hajredinaj says. “That’s just the world we live in now.”.

For younger workers, the “third arm” scenario feels even more normal. “If you’ve been on your phone since you were a baby. [using it] is not a sign of disrespect. it’s just a life habit. ” Fesinstine says. She also reflects on Gen Alpha students and suggests constant phone use could translate into multitasking skill: “Maybe it’s a positive sign that we’re able to be a little bit more multi-faceted and multi-attentive now.”.

Lawson, however, stays with UWM’s core belief about what the policy changes. After years of phone-free meetings, she says it can become a culture shock when she sees phones in use at other companies.

“I see people with their cellphones out, and it makes me uncomfortable,” Lawson says. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘You were on a Zoom and you have your phone out?’” It’s just so many layers of technology. It’s really hard to focus.”

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