One of the top topic business trends at the moment is if/how companies can embrace BYOD in the workplace.
While I think a large portion of the argument should revolve around whether actual benefits are gained in different types of businesses and use cases, most of the focus has tended to be on how to manage and enforce company policy in these situations.
An oft glossed over aspect of BYOD in the workplace is, who’s expected to support these myriad devices. Let’s be honest here, even if they brought their favourite tablet, laptop, etc from home, most workers probably don’t know all the minutiae of how to get the most out of it – how to setup VPN’s, connect to large networked office printers, perhaps even how to connect to the company wifi.
Who’s expected to spend the time and money to make that work? In their minds, probably the company, and that means the company techie. I’d just as soon not be fighting office fires to keep staff as productive on their own devices as they would be on company devices, and I’m sure management would echo that.