The Pros & Cons of a Bring Your Own Device Policy

 

The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is all about companies allowing employees to bring their own devices to work to be used for work purposes. For many organisations, mobile devices in the workplace pose the question of whether it really is the best thing to do. As with any new policy, there are pros and cons that could influence the way people see BYOD programs in the workplace. BYOD provides plenty of positives, but it also presents several tricky situations for employers. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of implementing a BYOD policy in your organisation.

 

Pros

• Familiarity: The familiarity that employees have with their own devices allows them to collect dataand tackle work-related tasks with increased ease and efficiency in a more timely manner.
• Flexibility: By allowing employees to use their own devices, they are able to work anywhere at any time without needing to use other tools to access work documents. This removes the need to email copies of documents back and forth to be stored in your company system after being worked on.
• Financial Savings: BYOD means that employers save money, since they don’t have to buy devices for each of their employees. An added benefit of this is that employees are more likely to take better care of the devices, since they own them. This greatly reduces costs for repairs and updating and in fact could possibly remove such costs entirely.

 

Cons

• Liability: Who should pay for a new device if something goes wrong with it or if it gets stolen during work time? What about when someone is using the device (or claims to be using the device) for work-related tasks outside of work hours and something goes wrong? These are questions that need to be carefully considered and for which a solution and firm policy ought to be provided before implementing the BYOD program in your company.
• Security: Even though security on devices with access to private work information is important, it is more difficult to manage the security on personal devices. The personal devices connected on your company’s network could be the gateway for a hacker to get access to your company’s confidential information.
• Data Retrieval: After a contract has been terminated or when an employee leaves the company, it may be necessary to remove the company’s private information from the employee’s device, which could prove to be difficult. A plan should be in place to prevent the potential misuse of information.

 

A BYOD policy should be put in place beforehand, explaining the expected and acceptable use of personal devices in the workplace (in place of company-provided ones). This should limit the potential risks that could come from the implementation of a BYOD programme in the workplace. A well thought-out BYOD policy and properly informed employees are important in ensuring the success of any new protocol such as this.