“People were reluctant to use the laptops because they found them a bit cumbersome,” said Gee Bafhtiar, operations director at Comfort Care Services, which provides housing and rehabilitation services for adults with mental illness and other special needs.
Some employees didn’t want to wait through the multi-step logon process. Others worried that pulling out a big, black piece of hardware would upset their more anxious patients — using a smartphone or tablet seemed less intrusive.
“Many of our staff members were saying, ‘We’re perfectly happy with our own devices’,” Bafhtiar said. “We realised that without allowing [bring your own device] in, we weren’t going to realise the efficiency gains.”
The “bring your own device” genie is out of the bottle at workplaces worldwide.
A new survey by international recruiting company Robert Half found that three-quarters of UK employers let workers use their own laptops, smartphones, tablets and other devices in the workplace. Similar Robert Half surveys conducted last year found that nearly half of Canadian employers and one-third of US employers allow staff to access corporate networks with their own devices.
The challenge for companies and managers lies in creating a BYOD strategy that keeps workers happy, while also keeping sensitive corporate and client data secure.
Viruses and device theft aren’t the only concerns. Also keeping IT departments awake at night: workers who use their own devices to e-mail sensitive company data outside the corporate network; use of mobile apps like Dropbox and Google Docs to store corporate documents; and the ever-growing roster of contractors, consultants and freelancers using personal devices to work on company projects.
“Everybody’s trying to deal with this,” said Richard Jordan, principal at eBusiness Strategies, a workplace management consulting firm based in Houston, Texas. “It creates all kinds of security problems, but there’s no way to stop it because it’s becoming more and more pervasive. It’s an atom bomb with a pin pulled and put back in with tape.”