Business Best Practices
BYOD – Pros and Cons of this New Trend and What You Need to Know
May 10, 2017
As technology continues to advance, a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy may come to light within your organization sooner than you may think. What follows is that you or your IT department may be playing catch up to get with this new concept that is quickly catching on. The new BYOD trend is the latest installment in getting your organization prepared for employee-owned devices within your business, and what affects this will have on your business overall.
With changing company needs, many employees find themselves away from the office or working remotely from home. Technology has played a major part in making this possible. As long as an employee has access to a device with internet, an employer can track their location for payroll hours and accountability purposes.
.
BYOD Benefits and Advantages
Even though BYOD policies do come with their challenges, let’s not forget all the ways that this new technology could be benefiting your business.
- Businesses are no longer having to afford the cost of equipment and services
- Payroll is one of the most controllable costs a company can have. Making sure that your employees are where they are supposed to be, when they are supposed to be there, can save your company money. What company doesn’t want that?
- If your company is thinking of initiating a BYOD program or already has one in place, some questions on tracking employee time worked may arise. HireLevel can help simplify the process by using web-based timekeeping software. Such software can be used for timekeeping, GPS timekeeping and payroll. The software can be setup so that when an employee clocks in or out, their GPS location is recorded.
- Another option is to add specific IP addresses so that your employees will not be able to clock in or out at all if they are outside the specified IP address. This is a great feature for on-site jobs like construction. Employees can download the mobile app and punch in or out from their phone from the job-site.
- Employees are used to the efficiency and ease of use of their personal smartphones and tablets. A lot of companies have allowed their employees the ability to start bringing them into the workplace and using them to do their jobs. The BYOD craze can simplify some tasks and projects thanks to easy to use mobile apps and allow employees to access and share data anytime, anywhere. The flexibility that this allows can help each employee work more efficiently and put in more hours each week, no matter where they are located.
BYOD Cons
Keep in mind with all good things comes challenges as well. When allowing employees to use their personal devices this also means you are turning over much of the control over the IT hardware and how this can be used. It is more difficult to tell an employee what is and is not acceptable use of their own device. Be sure to have a clearly defined policy for BYOD that lays out the rules and expectations. Here is a list of what your policy should include:
- Minimum security requirements- regulate with company approved tools when allowing personal devices to connect to company data and networks
- Be sure to address the compliance issue. Some companies have compliance mandates they must abide by, for example, HIPPA have strict requirements on information security.
- Outline how the process will work if an employee leaves or is let go. There should be a plan on how the company will extract data from the personal device.
- Discuss what is acceptable and not acceptable to access during work hours to prevent falling productivity.
- Limitation of customizable devices such as jailbroken iPhones.
If your company is going BYOD, we can help you be strategic on your employee time tracking and reducing operating expenses with our mobile timekeeping solutions. Contact us today to help with your timekeeping needs.
Blog written by: Athena Caballero, Staffing Specialist
