We’ve all heard of ‘BYOB’ (bring your own bottle), but how about ‘BYOD’? BYOD stands for ‘bring your own device’, and the BYOD culture is becoming increasingly popular across the UK. In fact, our share of the BYOD market is pretty much equal to that of North America, where the culture is said to be booming.
While there are a number of benefits for businesses adopting BYOD practices and introducing these policies, implementing a system isn’t usually something that can be whipped up overnight. There are a few aspects — like business broadband — which are important to consider if you want to get it right.
We’ll discuss both the BYOD benefits and BYOD considerations, in this article below:
Why Have a BYOD Policy?
The most obvious benefit of a BYOD workplace is, of course, flexibility. It means that employees are ‘always connected’ through their mobile device, even when they’re waiting for a meeting to start or walking from one end of the office to another.
While it’s essential for employees to take regular breaks, especially if they work on computers, reports show that a BYOD workplace can actually make employees happier as they can save time; an impressive 37 minutes per week on average due to the convenience.
While there are many advantages of adopting a BYOD culture, there are still many organisations who are failing to implement such practices. Research suggests that the average BYOD adoption rate is around 60%, with 14% planning to introduce BYOD in the future, and 26% stating they have no plans to do so.
Preparing for BYOD
The first aspect that you’ll need to ensure is up-to-scratch and ready for the BYOD culture is your business broadband. Not only will you be welcoming more users and more devices to your network, but you’ll also want to ensure that your internet service provider — and your broadband service — are reliable as the more users you have, the greater the impact of downtime.
If you’re concerned about your business broadband and its ability to cope with significant changes such as this, then now might be a good time to consider upgrading your service to a dedicated leased line with plenty of bandwidth.