A growing trend among small businesses and large corporations alike is BYOD, or bring your own device, which is turning the workplace into a more tech-friendly environment on a personal level. Allowing employees to bring their own devices to work changes how the workforce interacts with technology in a positive way. If you’re unsure about BYOD for your employees, here are a handful of benefits that might help sway your decision.
1. Flexibility
By adopting BYOD, you are making 9-to-5 cubicle life a thing of the past, which is great for employees and the work environment. BYOD creates flexibility in the workplace, which does wonders for the completion of daily job-related tasks.
When employees are allowed to use their own devices both in and out of the office, it gives them the flexibility to contact clients and follow up with responsibilities while on the go. Likewise, because employees are inherently familiar with their own devices, BYOD makes employees more willing to complete pressing tasks outside the office via their mobile device.
2. Staff Engagement
When your employees are comfortable and familiar with the technology they use at work, it increases their engagement in their work and daily tasks. By allowing your staff to bring their own devices into the workplace, you are essentially making their work lives easier. This makes your employees more likely to interact with clients and complete tasks on a technological level, which speaks directly to productivity and efficiency.
3. Productivity and Efficiency
Ask any business owner their number one concern in the workplace and you’ll get the same response: a lack of productivity. But, BYOD actually increases productivity in the workplace by allowing your employees to complete many of their tech-related work responsibilities via one familiar device.
Without BYOD in place at your office, work phones have to contend with your employees’ personal phones. This adds an extra step in the interaction process, which lowers productivity. But when employees are able to access both personal and work-related information on their own device, it creates a more productive and thus efficient work environment, earning employees back 37 minutes of productivity per week globally, says a recent Cisco study.
4. Operating Costs
BYOD lowers your business’s operating costs on two fronts: equipment and data usage. When your employees use their own devices for work related matters, it means you aren’t responsible for supplying them with a secondary device for work purposes. This translates to huge upfront savings in terms of office equipment, up to $1,650 annually per mobile employee world-wide under a comprehensive play, says Cisco.
In addition, because your employees already have a data plan in place with their personal device, your business doesn’t have to worry about covering the cost for secondary data plans. Some companies that encourage BYOD split data plan costs with their employees, but most have their employees cover the full cost, which is something the staff are usually fine with.
5. The Inevitability of BYOD
Smart phones, tablets, and other handheld devices are quickly becoming a large part of everyone’s work and personal lives, so it’s only a matter of time before BYOD finds its way to your workplace. Arguably one of the biggest benefits of adopting BYOD into your office now is that it’s an absolute inevitability in the future.
Your employees are going to bring their personal devices to work whether they can access work-related information on them or not. So adopting BYOD now means your business will continue to stay ahead of the technological curve.
6. EMM Makes it All Possible
After reading the benefits of BYOD, do security concerns come to mind? Well, not to worry because enterprise mobility management makes safe and secure BYOD business practises a real possibility. With EMM, your employees’ personal device can access work-related documents, email accounts, apps and other data without compromising security.
The security that EMM provides protects both work-sensitive data and your employees’ personal data via one device. For example, Blackberry devices with enterprise mobility management use Secure Work Space, which combines user password authentication and secure connectivity to prevent data leakage in BYOD-friendly workplaces.
When you’re ready to make your business more productive and cost-efficient, let BYOD and enterprise mobility management help you reach your technological goals.