Guest Post: The BYOD Trend, Challenges and Successes
The following is a guest post from Software Advice.
In an effort to understand how organizations manage their employees’ use of personal devices at work, Software Advice recently surveyed companies ranging from three to 110,000 employees. The website, which publishes reviews and research on IT software, uncovered insights regarding the usage, risks and priorities associated with enabling Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs. We recently sat down with Ashley Verrill, IT analyst at Software Advice, to discuss their findings.
What exactly are employees using their personal devices for in the workplace?
A majority of the employees we surveyed (77%) use their own devices to some extent — either exclusively, or in addition to company-issued devices — to complete work. While this is a really high percentage, it doesn’t necessarily mean every company needs a formal BYOD policy. To make this determination, you need to understand what employees are actually doing with their mobile devices.
We found that employees use mobile devices at a roughly equivalent frequency for personal and business use. For work purposes, 67% of employees are using devices for business correspondence, 48% are accessing corporate tools and applications, and 44% are using their device for professional networking.
What goals were employers hoping to achieve by implementing a BYOD policy?
When employees are using mobile devices to access company data (48%), a formal policy for proper use is a necessity. Shockingly, our survey revealed only 30% of respondents’ companies had a BYOD policy in place at the time. Among those that did have a formal policy, the most important goal was to offset IT expenses (31 percent of the sample rated this goal as being “very important” when they implemented their program). In addition, 61% said increases in both productivity and accessibility of work-related information was “somewhat important.”
What about successes?
The majority of the respondents felt their policies were “somewhat successful” in increasing productivity and accessibility. Another 31% indicated their program was“very successful” in offering greater freedom of choice to their employees. The most success organizations had was in offsetting IT costs - 84% reported being “somewhat” or “very successful” to that end.
What risks were employers most concerned with?
Our research shows that data security is the top concern for organizations. In fact, 86% with a BYOD policy and 83% without one indicated this as a concern. Businesses with a formal policy indicated lost devices as their second greatest concern (78%). Those without BYOD policies had a three-way tie between regulating downloadable content, capacity of IT resources, and enforcing compliance with existing policies.
We were surprised to learn that only 12% of businesses without a BYOD policy plan to adopt one in the near future, considering the majority of respondents already use personal devices for work-related purposes. Security risks that accompany BYOD policies intimated some, according to our report. One respondent said he is “scared to death of security vulnerabilities.” Surely the adoption of a formal BYOD policy would help him feel more assured of his company’s data security.
You can read Software Advice’s entire report, here.
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