I challenge you to name someone who doesn’t panic when they lose their smartphone for five minutes. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Everyone from sixth graders to great-grandmothers have all but fused their smartphones to their hands for personal business—texting family, online banking, watching movies, getting directions to that new Gastropub everyone’s Yelping about. Today, more people own a smartphone than own a toothbrush, which I suppose is none of my business.

It would surprise exactly no one to learn that 500 million people also use their smartphones at work. What might be news, however, is that smartphones aren’t solely devices of distraction for selfies, social media and shopping. More than a third of those use their smartphones to perform their job functions. According to the Frost& Sullivan 2017 IT Decision Maker survey, 36% of respondents do at least part of their business function via smartphone. Indeed, employees rely on their trusty little digital workhorses to travel with them for home to car to office, performing functions both personal and professional.We also know 60% of mobile workers sleep with their phone, and 70% keep their phone “within eye contact” at work. The mobile trend will only multiply as Gen Z,a quarter of whom owned a smartphone before age 10, become the latest fresh faces in the workplace.

Clearly there is very little distinction between home, work,and everything in between, and those lines will continue to blur even more in the future.

In today’s workplace, separating the smartphone from personal and professional lives is a non-starter concept, and unprofitable one.Studies back up the claim that workers wielding a smartphone are measurably more productive. A Frost & Sullivan survey of 500 managers and executives at US companies and government organizations reported that in using smartphones to get work done, respondents gain nearly an hour (58 minutes) of work time each day and see an estimated productivity increase of an incredible 34 percent. The benefits don’t stop there. Bringing smartphones into the workplace (BYOD) is a boon to IT professionals who don’t have to deal with the hassles of running cabling and installing ethernet connections at each desk.

Turns out, the smartphone and the workplace are a natural combination!

As much advantages as smartphones bring, using them for an entire workday comes with limitations, regardless of whether you’re Team iOS or Team Android. Finding somewhere to prop it up to have back-to-back conference calls, or view someone’s presentation, is never graceful, even with a decorative finger-ring kickstand. The sound quality of the speakerphone is not up to snuff for professional calls. Then the battery runs out. We love our superhero devices we call smartphones, but even heroes need a wingman.

At Plantronics, giving mobile workers freedom is in our DNA. So, it was only natural to us to go beyond headsets into a new product category so that we could extend a full-fledged hero’s welcome to our little pocket productivity machines. We created Plantronics Elara 60 Series to elevate the smartphone experience to that of a true collaboration engine.

Here’s how that plays out: the mobile-first worker can start their business call at home, continue it in the car, then arrive at the office and place it on Plantronics Elara for a professional grade audio experience.

The mobile phone station also charges the smartphone’s battery, shifts easily to portrait or landscape mode, is adjustable to get the right angle on video calls, and gives the choice of speakerphone, handset or headset. Further, Elara makes connecting to Microsoft Teams— the wildly popular teamwork hub used by more than 200,000 organizations and growing— as easy as pushing the built-in button. 

Elara the epic smartphone wingman wouldn’t be a true Plantronics product without…headsets! Mobile-first workers can select their favorite headset, whether it’s the Voyager Focus,the Voyager 5200, Blackwire C5220USB-A,  BlackwireC3220USB-A , or enjoy the speakerphone or handset.

Now that we’ve shared how Plantronics is dialed into the needs of the mobile-first worker, we’ll ask the real question: Will there be a day when more people own a Plantronics Elara than own a toothbrush?