Without BYOD, 39% of UK Employees Would Leave—Study Says
Without BYOD, 39% of UK Employees Would Leave—Study Says by UCStrategies Staff
Cloud and virtualization software and services provider VMware, Inc. commissioned Vanson Bourne to survey 1,500 IT decision makers and 3,000 office workers in Europe. The poll results underscore the pressures faced by many businesses concerning BYOD and the demand of employees for flexible working.
It can be remembered that a separate study made by Aruba Networks uncovered the apparent distrust felt by BYOD employees in Europe, Middle East, and the United States toward their respective IT departments. The VMware study of workers in Europe, on the other hand, revealed that there are those labeled as “mobile rebels,” or employees who demand the use of personal mobile devices in the workplace. Thirty-nine percent of workers surveyed said that they would consider leaving if they were told that they could not use their personal mobile device for work.
“This is evidence of an emerging class of mobile rebels with a real cause - a new wave of employees using mobile devices to their advantage, to work more effectively and drive innovation,” said Joe Baguley, CTO at VMware, EMEA.
According to the VMware study, 67 percent of the UK office workers polled claimed that their organization does not provide them with mobile applications and tools that enable them to be efficient and productive. Sixty-two percent said that there were no mobility policies that allow flexibility to work while on the move.
The European study found that most IT departments were not able to meet the requirements of employees. Forty-seven percent of IT decision makers said that their department cannot address the mobile needs of employees across the business organization.
However, businesses are now seeing BYOD initiatives as ways to enhance worker productivity and satisfaction. Seventy percent of the UK IT decision makers said that they have already implemented or are planning to implement BYOD, with 32 percent of the respondents claiming that the BYOD implementation was geared toward attracting and retaining talent.
In addition, 46 percent of IT leaders said that they are designing or planning to design policies and systems that take on mobile employees and remote data access—as the norm and not as an exception—in 2013.
VMware CTO Joe Baguley explained, “Many companies are playing catch up to this trend. If workers aren't provided with the mobile resources they require, many will take the initiative and drive change themselves.”
The findings of the study also emphasized the underlying security issues that come with IT departments that are not fully involved. Sixty-nine percent of IT leaders polled believed that company data is stored on personal devices, while 46 percent suspected that the information being stored may be commercially sensitive. The suspicions of IT leaders are understandable. Only 35 percent of office workers were sure that the data on their personal devices were not commercially sensitive—an implication that majority of the workers were unsure of whether or not they were storing commercially sensitive data.
“Businesses must tread a fine line between embracing and promoting a flexible working culture, while protecting corporate intellectual property and customer data. There's a mobile uprising occurring, and it's creating management and security challenges for IT departments,” Baguley said. (KOM) Link. Link.