The outburst in communication and information technologies has led to qualitative changes in the working process aimed at increasing productivity. With such shifts grows the popularity of a practice known as bring your own device (BYOD) that, in general, refers to the company’s permission and encouraging the employee to work on his device instead of the corporate one.
Implementation of BYOD to business has certain benefits. The primary advantage of this practice is that companies shift some amount of expenditures to their employees who are willing to pay for their devices themselves. The organization may use the saved money for further development or satisfying any other needs it has. Second, in most cases employees work with the latest technology available on the market as people always desire to have the newest things, so, the company is not forced to spend money on continuous upgrading computers and software thus adding up to savings. Third, implementing BYOD practice is a psychological factor that leads to increasing level of happiness and satisfaction of the employees as they work with the devices and software they like, not the ones provided by the company that leads to growth in workforce productivity and effectiveness (Keyes, 2013).
Fourth, except for leading to increasing productivity during working hours, this practice also leads to growing dedication after the end of the working day because employees always carry work in their backpack. Finally, people tend to care more about the maintenance of their devices in comparison with those of the company, so that the IT staff obtains the possibility to focus on more significant tasks that fixing the devices or upgrading software.
Even though bringing personal devices to work has numerous benefits, there are also some problems with this practice. First of all, and the most obvious is the effectiveness of using them during the working hours. Nevertheless personal devices add to the employees’ productivity, they as well become a source of temptation to distract oneself from work and spend time and start browsing the web, playing games or chatting. The reason for this issue is that corporate devices usually block social networks or entertaining websites, while personal ones do not. The most significant matter, however, is the safety of corporate data as the probability of losing a tablet or smartphone is high.
Together with that, if the employee downloads a malware to his device, it quickly spreads to all other workers’ devices through the network. What is more, there is also the challenge of cloud services with all the company’s data hackings. That said, organizations do not always benefit from implementing BYOD practice, as they have to spend additional costs for developing security systems and special infrastructure that will enable adequate, smooth performance of different operating systems (What BYOD has to offer: Benefits and pitfalls, 2013), and these projects are usually of high cost.
Bearing in mind all the challenges deriving implementing BYOD, companies tend to concentrate on security matters. Among primary approaches to deal with these challenges, there are network approach, mobile device management approach already mentioned above, virtualization approach, and phone-centric approach. According to network approach, the company develops a system of controlling the access of devices to network, for example, by allowing access only to authorized users or those who went through the authentication process. The primary benefit of this approach is that the company knows when and how the employees gained access to the network. The second approach is mobile device management (MDM) that is controlling the use of the device through limiting its certain functions or making the employees use certain apps.
The main problem with MDM is that is may become a discouraging factor in work, as the employees feel the company’s control and that their privacy is at risk. The third approach is virtualization, and it is reduced to granting every employee a unique password to apps and desktop so that, in the case of losing a device, corporate data is secure. Finally, there is the phone-centric approach that is close to MDM with the difference that device management apps are installed to every smartphone or tablet, and the company controls everything that the employee does with that device (Garba, Armarego, Murray, & Kenworthy, 2015).
One of the real-world examples of successful BYOD implementation is Hamilton Health Sciences, a network of hospitals located in Hamilton, Ontario. The organization started using BYOD in 2007 when decided to allow its employees use their devices for work. The initial reason for this decision was the need to cut the budget on IT, so the company found that it was cheaper to develop a network and MDM system rather than upgrade to the latest technologies.
The company experienced positive effects of BYOD as the doctors can use their devices to gain all the necessary information about their patients from the unified database. What is more, clients enjoy a higher level of services as they can visit any of seven hospitals located all over Hamilton and feel no need to carry their data with themselves, as it is easily accessible (Volino, 2014). Up to date, the company upgraded its management and security system so that data leakage is nearly impossible.
So, I would strongly recommend implementing BYOD as the benefits definitely overweight the risks. The only thing that should be borne in mind is that before implementing it, the company should work on developing efficient systems for providing data security and device management so that it is sure that using this practice will lead to increasing productivity and income rather than losses.
References
Garba, A. B., Armarego, J., Murray, D., & Kenworthy, W. (2015). Review of the information security and privacy challenges in bring your own device (BYOD) environments. Journal of Information, 11(1), 38-54. Web.
Keyes, J. (2013). Bring your own device (BYOD) survival guide. Boca Raton, FL: Auerbach Publications. Web.
Volino, B. (2014). Four examples of BYOD’s true mobility. Web.
What BYOD has to offer: Benefits and pitfalls. (2013). Web.