BYOD – Can it make your employees more efficient?

Posted on 6 months, 1 week

BYOD or Bring Your Own Device is a relatively new opportunity that has arisen because even the largest corporation can struggle to keep up with the constant rate of technological change, providing state of the art devices to all their employees and their often diverse roles.

Very often the devices employees have at home or in their pockets are far more powerful than those provided for them. So what if you as an employee have an ancient desktop PC at work that runs XP and your company mobile phone has a tiny screen and won’t connect to email? Result – frustration. So what happens if you try and get your company's IT department to accept and adapt to your devices? Result – cost, delay and confusion. This scenario is particularly relevant to the burgeoning number of flexible home and away working generation of employees who may well toil away outside of company hours and therefore probably outside of IT department operating hours.

The standard reply to the idea of BYOD has been security, but with improved systems and the growth of the cloud, security, while still a big concern, need not be the buffers that bring this particular opportunity to a halt. Critics of the strategy also claim that people may do things with their own equipment they wouldn't consider with a company laptop. Companies thinking of this sort of change must also take into account that friends and family often have access to personal laptops opening up potential security risks.

There are corporations out there that do offer a BYOD package acknowledging that existing systems were far too limiting, for example if you wanted to use more than e-mail you needed a company laptop. These new systems, sometimes retaining a few “pool” laptops that are available to staffers, encourage their people to buy their own devices and access their desktop remotely from home or “on the go”. The benefits are clear - under the new system the IT support staff are more likely to be free to do other critical work. Understandably in this enlightened age work-life balance is another driving factor - employees can use these systems from anywhere enabling those who wish to focus on work at home in a more relaxed fashion.

There are other business models where an opportunity is given to the employee to purchase their own devices - an allowance provided to purchase a standard model with the employee being given the chance to upgrade at their own cost. Unsurprisingly it appears that most employees love having the freedom to choose and claim to enjoy their computing experience more. Imagine buying a brand new top end Mac on a company purchase scheme, how happy would you be to get the device, and how happy the company would be not have it on their books?

Compatibility is also quoted as an objection but presumably common sense would kick in and the company would have a set of clear guidelines on what equipment could be used, its security systems and usage and data protection policies.

Whether the driving factor for considering the opportunity of BYOD is cost-cutting, employee satisfaction or flexibility any company needs to be very careful to consider all the facts.

Does your company/organisation practice BYOD? We would love to hear the pros, cons, and pitfalls you have faced and whether you agree with our opinion?