BYOD: Finding the right balance between freedom and control

Did you know that by the year 2025, 75 percent of the workforce will be part of the millennial generation? And with every millennial comes a smartphone.

The stats cut both ways. In fact, according to industry analyst Gartner, by 2017, half of employers will require all employees to supply their own device for work.

So it’s clear that when it comes to mobility and your workforce, this surge in the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement is rapidly dissolving the barrier between work use and personal use for smartphones and tablets. It’s also clear that your company’s use of a BYOD model and how millennial employees (and the older folks too) want to use BOYD may not always align. Now is the ideal time to review your strategies that leverage these ubiquitous assets.

From the user view: it’s all about fluid mobility

Mobile-empowered employees have BYOD requirements that include device choice, a complete separation of work and personal activities, and unobtrusive access to corporate data, applications, and email. Mobile office functionality must be seamless and easy.

From the company view: it’s all about the right level of control and security

As your business migrates away from company-sponsored devices, you still need to maintain ownership of phone numbers and business contacts. You need to be able to support employee usage for company-related voice and data activities, as well as maintain company ownership of phone number and business contacts. Most importantly, you must be able to protect company data on your employee’s devices

Keep everyone mobile, happy, and more secure

The good news is, you have choices when it comes to your mobility strategy – choices that work to your business and mobile workers’ advantage.

You can empower employee freedom while controlling business image and reachability with hosted voice solutions. This approach provides mobile application layers and cloud-centered controls to channel voice, SMS, fax, and messaging – from virtually anywhere.

You can also look to hosted VoIP solutions that enable you to shift mobility spend from Cap-Ex to Op-Ex. With reach and security covered, you can use enterprise mobility management (EMM) tools to support BYOD scenarios that let staff members use their own phones, while easily measuring and recouping business-use costs from the business.