Tip of the Week: Bring Your Own Device Policy Considerations

Bring Your Own Device is a hot trend in today’s business environment, as it creates a ton of opportunities for businesses to cut costs. However, this is only true if you implement a BYOD policy that your organization can take advantage of, as it creates considerable problems for your unprepared businesses.

First, let’s take a look at some of the basic principles of BYOD. Basically, instead of an employee being given a device by your business, they use their own personal devices for work purposes.

Why BYOD Has Become So Popular

On paper, BYOD seems like the perfect solution. Businesses that take advantage of BYOD practices can save up to $350 a year per employee and using portable devices for work purposes can save employees about an hour per workday, as well as improve productivity by up to 33 percent. Other benefits include, but are not limited to, the following:

Access to Better Technology

You might have a laundry list of technology solutions you want to implement, but at the end of the day, you’re at the mercy of your budget. You always run the risk of a new solution affecting your operations in a negative way. While this might have an effect on your decision making for business technology, your employees have a different mindset, replacing devices as they want. It’s more likely that your business’ employees will replace outdated technology, leading to happier and more productive employees overall.

Reduced Financial Toll on Businesses

Your technology acquisitions will largely be driven by the budget behind them. For example, you might want to replace your workstations, but if the budget doesn’t allow for this, then it just simply can’t happen. Rather than hope your budget accommodates these changes, you can instead give your employees the option of using their personal devices, freeing your business from the responsibility of acquiring said technology. The expenses of BYOD are basically limited to securing access to information and implementing it.

Employee Satisfaction

You might find that your organization’s technology simply isn’t pleasant to work with. Forcing productivity is rarely effective, and aging workstations certainly aren’t going to make the process any easier when they have just bought a shiny new laptop. If you force employees to work using technology that doesn’t work properly for no good reason, they will naturally push back. You avoid this situation entirely by giving them permission to use their own devices.

The Potential Issues with BYOD

Distractions

Compared to the amount of productivity applications on the app stores, there are plenty of ways to get distracted by BYOD. While you can whitelist and blacklist applications on your company-owned devices, you don’t have too much control over devices your employees utilize.

Loss of Control

Losing control of devices is a recurring issue for businesses, especially with BYOD on the playing field. Policies can be put in place, but they require the employee’s consent, which they are probably not going to give. What happens if an employee leaves with company data on their device? What if they are careless with the way they access this information? All of this needs to be considered.

Compliance Shortcomings

How will your BYOD implementation interact with other parts of your organization, namely compliance? Requirements put in place by laws like HIPAA and Dodd-Frank mean that IT administrators need to be particularly aware of how data is being distributed to BYOD devices.

How Do You Leverage BYOD Securely?

The best way to make sure BYOD is being managed properly is to work with a managed service provider with professional IT technicians on staff who can help you navigate these muddy waters. To learn more, reach out to us at 724-473-3950.