In the past decade, BYOD (bring your own device) culture has flourished in many businesses, largely as a necessary response to the fact that employees were using personal devices for professional purposes and so employers had to scramble to catch up.
Even with all the changes that have occurred to date, there are still a lot of ways in which BYOD tech and the business practices that underpin it will continue to evolve, so here is a look at a handful of the most important trends shaping this particular phenomenon.
Remote Working Will Reconfigure Employee Expectations
One of the main trends in BYOD technology that is emerging at the moment is that of the need for businesses to encompass expectations of employees with regards to remote working.
Ongoing challenges that have put the traditional office at risk of a radical overhaul, if not outright extinction, mean that more people are reliant on personal devices to fulfill their professional obligations.
The upshot of this is that employers need to do more to both embrace the demand for remote work opportunities, while also giving team members the means to perform their duties efficiently.
Arguably this state of affairs is making connectivity more relevant than ever, since if networking resources are not up to scratch, then it does not matter how powerful a given device might be on its own. If it does not have a speedy enough internet access point on tap, productivity will suffer.
As such, businesses and employees alike need to be increasingly aware of how their network solutions are chosen, both at the office and at home.
IoT Integration Is Inevitable
Another key trend that is leaving its mark on BYOD culture at the moment is that of the Internet of Things, a concept that encompasses the nebulous mass of networked devices which are spreading throughout commercial and domestic environments alike at the moment.
From printers and security systems at the office, to smart speakers and displays at home, the ever-widening web of interconnected devices presents both new opportunities and challenges for organizations of all sizes.
Just as businesses were having to alter device management strategies and implement new policies in the wake of the smartphone and tablet revolution over the last ten years, looking forward they will need to encompass even more connected devices, spread across multiple locations.
This will require a robust approach from a security perspective, and will also necessitate the training of employees in the safe use of IoT tech to ensure it does not compromise BYOD best practices, especially in the context of the aforementioned increase in remote working.
Data Must Be Used Effectively
The final trend that businesses need to be aware of when considering the future of BYOD policy is that while they may have previously struggled to adapt to embrace personal devices being used by employees, now that they are set up for this, there are opportunities to harvest actionable information from the interactions this creates.
For example, being able to see how employees are using particular hardware resources, and which forms of interactions are able to generate the most positive impact on productivity and job satisfaction, will allow an organization to make tweaks to its policies that have wide-ranging benefits.
Ultimately this data, if used correctly, will allow businesses to be better prepared for the unavoidable changes that lay just around the corner, rather than being blindsided by them as they might have been in the past. This can give forward thinking companies the edge over their less innovation-focused competitors.
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