Managing Employee-Owned Devices in the Workplace

It’s not often that a trend impacts the workplace with disregard to company size, industry, and other typically differentiating factors. However, there is one we’re dealing with now, and it’s taking IT by storm: Employee-owned devices in the workplace.

The consumerization of IT has made tech gadgets cool and accessible on a broad scale, and it’s up to IT managers, CIOs and other company leaders to figure out how to manage the influx of employee-owned smartphones, tablets, laptops and other devices into their organizations.

There are three main schools of thought in regard to employee-owned devices:

• Traditional: Policies are in place prohibiting employee-owned devices from entering the workplace, or at least prohibiting them from being used for work purposes.  
• Modern: Corporate acceptance that employee-owned devices exist in the office and are being used for work purposes, but devices are not sanctioned as corporate machines. There may or may not be policies in place regarding proper usage, data ownership, security and other conditions. 
• Innovative: Corporate realization that employee-owned devices are the future of IT, and have the potential to provide great benefits to both employees and the company alike. The company is interested in integrating employee-owned devices into their supported IT model. This approach is commonly being referred to as BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device.

No matter where your organization falls in its current approach to employee-owned devices, it’s important to understand and evaluate the complexity of the issue and determine what makes the most sense for your organization moving forward. Often, this means throwing away outdated IT-management policies with rigid parameters regarding what devices are acceptable for corporate use.

Follow the links below to learn more about how you can address and manage employee-owned devices in the workplace.

Learn how to manage employee-owned devices that aren’t approved as corporate-work machines (but may be used as such).

Learn how to implement and manage employee-owned devices that double as work machines and are sanctioned by the company.

Learn how to bring on-the-go printing to your mobile workers.

Or, learn about MCPc's anyplace workspace™ architecture—a cloud solution that ties mobility together with a secure and supported virtual infrastructure.
 

Mobile Device Management on the MCPc Blog

Read the commentary of MCPc's technology experts on managing mobile devices and other IT topics.