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.

上班时间打私人电话可得“三思而后行”了。

公司现在可以买到一种能够自动分析办公室职员们所打的电话的服务，这种服务可以分辨出哪些是公务电话，哪些是私人电话，而且每月能向管理层提供“屡犯者”的清单。

南非IT公司Dimension Data的产品经理罗伯特·比克顿说：“如果你每天早上9点钟左右打一个30秒的电话，而且你所拨打的号码不是同事们的常用号码，那么基本可以确定，这个电话是打给情人的。”

比克顿说，尽管也有一些其它的IT公司提供这种电话分析技术，但Didata则是首家能将数据信息转化为能直接上报给经理的名单的公司。

Didata说，采用这种“电话监视”月服务可以使公司的电话费减少10%至15%，更不用说工作效率的提高所节省的人力时间了。

雇员可能会对管理层实施电话监控的想法产生不满。但Didata公司称，这个系统仅针对那些电话费狂高及经常在上班时间打私人电话的员工，并称电话的内容不会受到监听。

比克顿说：“很显然，打一些私人电话是可以被接受的。这一措施主要针对的是那些一个月能打12个小时的私人电话，电话费高达114.7美元的少数人。”