In Bangkok, you find signs in the Skytrain stations urging you to look up rather than down at your phone. Go down into the Hong Kong MTR and you hear announcements asking you to be careful on the escalators and “please do not be looking only at your phone.” Walk down the streets of Seoul staring at your phone, and you will see a suggestion painted on the sidewalk that maybe you should be looking up instead.

We spoke a couple months ago with a British client in Hong Kong who leads the sales team for her company. When asked what the biggest change was that she noticed in the workplace, without missing a beat she said, “I look out across the floor and everyone is staring at their phones.” Bear in mind, this was long before Pokemon Go made its first appearance in Asia. The love affair with the smartphone is not a new thing.

The attachment to phone technology has always been a bit stronger in Asia than in the west. Texting took off in Japan in the pre-smartphone days while countries outside the region were still getting used to voice. It would be easy to speculate on why people are so fascinated by their phones in Asia, but that’s another article (or a book) in itself. What’s more important to you is the effect it may have on workforce productivity and engagement, and what you might do about it.

In the first place, it soaks up time that your employees should be spending doing their jobs. That’s perhaps more obvious in a customer-service environment, if your staff is playing with their phones rather than helping customers, but it may be less obvious in an office environment. As one employee asked us, “If I get all my work done, what does it matter if I’m on my phone?” A fair question, but consider this: if your staff spends 20% of their time playing with their phone and they still get all their work done, then maybe your staff is 20% bigger than it needs to be. It might not be costing you revenue, but it’s certainly adding to your human capital expenses.

Second, it’s a distraction. Plenty of studies over the last decade have revealed that humans are not quite as good at multitasking as we like to think we are. This is especially true in knowledge work. When you’re working on something and turn away to something else, it can take as much as 20 minutes to get back to the same level of focus. Keep checking your phone every 5 or 10 minutes, and you’ll never get into a place where you’re giving your work your best attention. Even if you finish on time, there’s often a price to be paid in terms of stress.

And of course, someone checking Facebook Messenger during a meeting may unwittingly open up a video, with an audio track that can throw everyone off their game. It’s a hassle.

It does not have to be this way. During my last military assignment at the Pentagon, I worked in a secure room where mobile phones were not allowed. We stored them in small lockers before going into the facility. If we needed to check messages or call someone, we stepped outside, took care of it, then got right back to work. Obviously, we didn’t do that very often throughout the day. I am not suggesting you should have your employees lock up their phones outside — you would probably have a revolt on your hands if you did that — but I mention it to make the point that human beings are physically capable of not playing with their phones every 5 minutes.

So, if you are concerned about lost productivity, what should you do? One manager we spoke to in Singapore said, “If I tell my people to stop playing with their phones, they will look at me like I told them to stop breathing. It’s just part of what they do.” Having a “phone policy” is probably not going to help. Rather than making a big deal about it, maybe a few subtle approaches can help.

Leading by example is an important first step. If your team sees your eyes glued to your phone, they are more likely to do the same. If you are actually interacting with real people and focusing on your work, they are more likely to do that, too. You should act the way you want your employees to act.

You can also intervene when you see people acting distracted. Take that moment to ask them about some work they are supposed to be doing. “How’s that report coming?” or “Have you been in touch with that client?” is a more positive message than “Put that phone away and get to work.”

Take a look around at meetings, especially large ones, and see where people’s attention is. If it’s on their phone, then maybe ask them a question to bring their attention back, and also make the point that they should be focused on what’s going on.

Of course, if you see people who appear bored in a meeting, you should also ask yourself if whether or not they even need to be there. In fact, anytime you see a lot of people focused on something other than work, you should take that opportunity to review your manning. If you have a lot of people who seem to have a lot of extra time on their hands, maybe you have too many people to begin with.

The rise of smartphones over the last decade has put a world’s worth of information in our hands and have made us instantly accessible. Just because we have that information, though, does not mean we have to be digging through it all the time, and just because we are can be instantly reached 24/7 does not mean we have to be instantly reached 24/7. At some point, your employees need to be focused on their work, and if they aren’t, you should consider turning that around.