THE smartphones we use today are more powerful and flexible than most desktop computers you would find in our offices five years ago. They allow us to do just about any of the business tasks that used to require an employee to be sat in front of an office computer. It's a change which more and more businesses are embracing with BYOD (bring your own device) policies.
This allows staff to make use of their laptops or hand-held devices for work purposes. The benefits are considerable. For employers it reduces the IT costs of supplying, maintaining and updating business devices. It also allows organisations to adopt more flexible and efficient ways of working. For employees, it provides the convenience of using devices attuned to their needs as well as unlocking the ability to work in more flexible ways which are better suited to their lives.
It's a change which is happening rapidly and although it's reported that around 83 per cent of companies with fewer than 20
employees supported BYOD it's suggested that only 36 per cent of companies throughout the EU have introduced a formal company BYOD policy.
For companies without a policy, it can create a grey area when it comes to what is acceptable and what's not. Here are some general tips to make sure your organisation has BYOD under control: n Implement a policy - For many organisations, the move towards BYOD will have occurred as more of a gradual process than any deliberate company decision.
Employees will have naturally started to share data between their work and personal devices. Without having introduced a formal policy, issues only arise when they become problems. Employees, therefore, need to be given clear guidance on how they can use personal devices for work purposes.
* Promote pragmatism - The cost of data is not something that employees have traditionally had to worry about. But as the number of mobile workers increases, it's a change of attitude that organisations need to actively promote. A practical example would be an employee on a foreign trip looking for access to a free wifi spot to send data rather than incurring the often considerable costs charged by a mobile network.
* Be flexible -- One of the major benefits of BYOD is the way it opens up powerful and flexible new ways for employees to operate.
By its very nature, it will therefore require a similar flexibility when it comes to a company policy. The danger of trying to impose too rigid a structure is that you stifle the
benefits and deter employees. It's an area where organisations need to find the right balance. The move to BYOD will inevitably present new challenges but the potential benefits are considerable. There is a growing body of evidence to show that employees using their own devices leads to increased productivity and better motivation.
Business applications like 'Webexpenses' is a typical example of a new generation of business tools which are helping organisations to find more efficient and flexible ways of working.
You can find out more about this typical cloud-based app that runs on smart mobile devices, in this case providing the employee with a secure business app that integrates with the companies back office accountancy software, to remotely manage their own business expenses on their own smart phone or tablet device.
* Trevor Bingham (trevor. bingham@itfuel.com) is business relationship manager at FUEL in Craigavon