Tip of the Week: Personal Devices at Work Can Be Used for Good, if You Have a BYOD Policy

While your employees will certainly need devices upon which to complete their work, this need can be a point of some contention. After all, every employee will have a preference when it comes to their device and its operation, a preference that doesn’t line up with the device you would supply them with. However, this tension may be relieved by implementing a BYOD policy.

BYOD is the acronym for Bring Your Own Device, a practice that many businesses have embraced to help improve employee morale and increase the comfort level their workforce has with their solutions. In short, instead of providing an employee with a company-owned device, the employer allows an employee to use their own devices to complete their tasks.

This strategy has proven to be a beneficial one for many companies, with the condition that there are certain policies put into place from the start.

One of the primary benefits that many companies see is a cost savings when it comes to purchasing and maintaining equipment. The reason for this is simple--if employees are supplying the equipment they are using to fulfill their work responsibilities, then you won’t necessarily have to spend as much on company-owned equipment, either by simply not having it on hand or (more likely) saving time and resources on potential repairs that are practically never necessary. In fact, the savings are often considerable enough that a company will help cover the cost of the employee’s plan.

Another reason that BYOD is an increasingly common approach is due to the fact that additional cost savings come about as a result of the lack of necessary training for an employee to become familiar with the device. It does belong to them, after all, and so they will already be familiar with its capabilities. Due to this familiarity, the employee should have a greatly reduced learning curve before fully adopting the company-mandated solutions.

Finally, there’s the most obvious benefit to introducing BYOD, and that’s the fact that the ability to work on a device that they are comfortable with and know will allow your employees to achieve greater levels of productivity while feeling more satisfied with their situation.

Have you ever experimented with a BYOD policy? What benefits did you see? Share your observations in the comments section!