Our systematic review has shown that health workers can be disadvantaged by the cost implications of having to use their personal phones for work, including the costs of the phone, data, airtime and electricity. Healthcare workers in low income settings describe these costs as a significant financial burden, and call for some form of compensation. A Health Extension Worker in Ethiopia describes it as follows:
"The card price is expensive. But, since it is very hard to work without a phone, we are spending money from our salary to buy phone cards. Sometimes we minimize our monthly food expenditure to buy airtime" (Hampshire 2021, in Glenton 2024).
QUESTION: Is it common in your setting for healthcare workers to have to cover the costs related to using their personal phone for work purposes? Do they feel similarly about this to healthcare workers in Ethiopia and other settings? And do you know of solutions to this problem in your setting?
COMMENT (NPW): Our systematic review noted that cost is a particularly important issue for lower-level health workers. Is it an issue for you or for your colleagues? Have you raised these issues with supervisors and what has been done to address it?
One option is for the health worker to assess additional costs of using their personal phone for work calls. But this is cumbersome, varies from week to week, and is open to intentional or unintentional error. Another option could be for a set monthly stipend to be included in the health workers' salary which broadly compensates for costs without the latter having to be itemised. I have no idea about HR management (!) but the latter option would seem fair and easy to implement?
What do you think?
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org