Articles
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
by Jo Colley
Jo Colley is a digital learning designer at Tribal Labs
Any train journey or time spent in an airport will offer myriad examples of people mixing their work and private lives. Taking calls, writing up reports on tablets or laptops, keeping up their online presence through social networking sites, switching between email accounts to keep all the streams of their life flowing ─ whether it takes place during “normal” working hours, or from 6 a.m. to midnight and possibly beyond. Our capacity to mix and blur what used to be clearly compartmentalized aspects of our lives has been massively facilitated by the smartphone and the tablet, and by 3G and 4G technology. We are endlessly connected and endlessly available, as workers and as private citizens.
But whose kit are we using? How many of those multi-tasking individuals are using a company smartphone/laptop/tablet? BYOD (bring your own device) is increasingly important in both the corporate and the academic worlds. And some of the issues arising are the same.
Cost
Is it cheaper to have your employees use their own devices? Initially it might seem that this is a no-brainer: no upfront costs for equipment, and the user group’s familiarity with the devices should make for smooth on-boarding. However, nothing is ever that simple. Apart from the fact that multiple devices can mean an increase in development work (and costs) to provide cross-platform compatibility, there are other factors to consider.
Security
Work phones and laptops can have maximum security via encryption, and can stay more or less in the control of the organization that is providing them. It is much more of a challenge with BYOD to add these layers to personally owned devices. Your employees might
consider it acceptable to apply a password protected protocol, but if an organization also wants to prohibit certain types of applications, some resentment may arise. Furthermore, corporate policy needs to apply to each type of device and that requires regular audits: a time-consuming and potentially expensive process.
One cell or two?
For many workers, using two devices (one for work and one for personal use) has become the norm, and the practice provides a good solution for keeping the two worlds separate. For others, this is an unnecessary complication when the line between work and leisure has become less clear. One phone for all might make life simpler, although it requires a clear policy and training process so everybody knows what can and can’t be done on the device. Staff awareness and willingness are two big issues. Providing an incentive can help: offering a contribution to broadband costs, or helping with purchase costs, for example. The company might also need to monitor that staff are to make sure staff members are conforming to the guidelines and not taking advantage: issues of trust (both ways) are part of the BYOD picture.
Playing in the sandbox
Recently, a technological solution has been developed to deal with the problems of BYOD. Sand boxing divides your device into two parts – one for work and one for private use. In this way, the official stuff can be tucked away behind encryption, separate from the private and personal. When an employee leaves, all the official data can be wiped without affecting the personal. Other technological solutions include one by Citrix, which doesn’t host data on a mobile device but creates a separate secure corporate locker. These ideas are relatively new and are not being widely used yet. But this approach to separating the two halves of a person’s life within a single device may well be the future.
School of the future
What’s happening in the world of education? Children going into school these days are generally familiar with a range of mobile devices, and some may even own their own tablet. Increasingly, the efforts previously made by schools to keep mobiles out of the classroom are being overturned by new attitudes toward the importance of new technology for education. Research into parental attitudes carried out recently by Grunwald, reveals the following:
Sixteen percent of all K–12 parents, and almost one in four parents of high school students (24%), report that their child’s school allows students to use family-owned mobile devices in the classroom. Given that half of all high school students take a smartphone to school every day, however, some students seem to be powering down their devices in the classroom, or using them under the radar.
University Challenge
In a research project in which the use of mobile devices is being assessed, or is a key part of the research, the issues raised above are also relevant. The big advantage in BYOD for research is the participant buy-in and familiarity with a device, which can cut down on training costs. In a UK research project with fourth-year medical students at the University of Leeds in the UK, the participants were initially supplied with smartphones loaded with the applications the researchers wanted to test. This project began four years ago, when ownership of smartphones among the student body was less ubiquitous, and worked well initially. However, the researchers are now moving to a BYOD situation, as they are able to rely on the fact that participants will all possess a suitable smartphone of their own, and that the development costs of providing a multi-platform approach will be outweighed by the lack of necessity to buy the latest editions of smartphones for all participants. They will monitor the results of this change in process to see whether this less predictable range of devices can take part in the research on an equal basis.
Bowing to the inevitable
Given that employees will be bringing their personal devices to work regardless of how the company intends them to be used, there is an argument for going with the flow, and establishing a policy that incorporates employee choice, and also takes into account issues of privacy, security and health and safety. Making sure both sides are clear about what’s acceptable is a key element in BOYD success. Following this, making sure the process is straightforward and user friendly – whether you decide to go for a self-enrol or bulk process ─ with appropriate back-up, is also paramount to BYOD success. The technology must be seamless and efficient to make this work.
To sum up
It’s obvious that BYOD ─ for work, education and research ─ is becoming a more popular solution or alternative to providing devices for a workforce or classroom. As private and corporate worlds continue to merge, it remains to be seen how security challenges will eventually be met by companies who require their employees to use their own devices. Individuals may also need some persuading that it’s in their own interests ─ not just their employer’s ─ to use their personal devices for work purposes.