Mobile devices have allowed for much advancement in the field of personal communication, and now those benefits are being transferred to a work environment, as many workplaces are being aided greatly by the introduction of BYOD (bring your own device) protocols to help shave IT costs and allow for more efficient connectivity. This often makes for a more productive and satisfied workplace.
The boons of this are not only the reduction of IT costs and employee well-being (though those are some pretty sizeable perks), but the fact that it allows them to access company data and to perform work functions wherever they have 3G,Wi-Fi and/or mobile service. Some sectors that obviously benefits from this are freelance workers, salesmen and other independent contractors. From my experience working as a salesman during college summer vacations, I did have an office I’d have to return to for filing paperwork every so often and send out my orders, but I did not have a set workplace since it was based on house calls. Thanks to this, we had no option but to use our own devices, and it allowed for much quicker and convenient calls, filing and reporting to the office. Thanks to our positions as independent contractors, this also allows the bills to be claimed as business expenses.
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While being independent contractors necessitates that we used our own devices, doing this for a workplace-oriented job allows for greater productivity since most people already use their device at work, and it shaves cost off IT(for setup and connections of company-owned phones, regardless if they are personally enabled or not) and the cost of the phones themselves. The tradeoff is that IT will have to take a more “holistic” approach, covering all sorts of devices and creating standards. Because there are few standards in this nascent field, it is up to the companies to craft their own terms of use for the devices. In time there will be standard protocols, but for now it’s just a new frontier.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey