BYOD Policy, the new black!

Following a recent Ofcom 2015 Communications Review, it’s not that astounding that one key finding that came from this report was the lack of separation between business and personal communications. Most employees now have smartphones along with many other devices that make it even easier for employees to make use of their own personal technology within the workplace.

The biggest concern that came out of the report was the issue that employees worry about how much of their own personal information, stays personal as well as the lack of reimbursement for work carried out on their own personal devices.

Businesses are aware this is happening as there is evidence that many are fostering developing their own work related apps for use on their employees devices, meaning there is rarely a time that an employee is not connected to work. A recent survey by Tyntec, a telecom web convergence company revealed 30% of UK employees use their personal mobile for work related tasks. Staggeringly almost 90% use their mobile phones for work outside of normal business hours and it’s not surprising that over 81% stated they would prefer to have two separate phones or one phone with two numbers so they could differentiate personal from business.

This flags up another new requirement for businesses – an official BYOD policy for the workplace.

Many businesses are already installing a corporate mobility strategy that focuses on specific issues related to their own organisation, but a BYOD policy will fundamentally need to tackle a work-life balance and eliminate the obvious privacy and reimbursement concerns that employees are voicing. One example of overcoming these concerns are corporate phone apps with virtual phone numbers. This will enable the use of separate phone numbers as unique identifiers for employees. Once installed, the employee only need switch to the app for all work related communication and ultimately separate the two.

The continued convergence of technologies shows how agile digital has become and it’s the forward thinking companies that will benefit as employees grow to simply ‘expect it’.