July 4, 2014
A third of BYOD use is invisible to the organisation, claims new report
In spite of the ongoing effort by companies to manage the use of employees’ own technology through Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies, around a third of all BYOD activity is invisible to the IT department, according to new research from Ovum and Samsung. The report also claims that while over half of employees now use their own devices to work and access information, nearly two thirds of them are not subject to any formal IT policy. According to the report, the problem centres on the issue of ‘multi-screening’, whereby people decide which device is appropriate for whatever they are doing and don’t much care what the IT department thinks. In addition, nearly a quarter (22 percent) of employees use their own software and apps to work, which means that this is not a problem restricted to hardware. The upshot is that between 30-35 percent of BYOD is invisible to the organisation, although that represents a marked improvement on the situation a couple of years ago, when the proportion was around half.
June 24, 2014
Five things we have learned about flexible working ahead of the new right to ask regs
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design
You can’t help but notice that surveys about flexible working have been pretty thick on the ground over the last few weeks and months. The reason is that – as well as the usual ongoing fascination with the subject – the UK Government is extending the right to request regulations at the end of this month, allowing all staff to ask their employers for flexible working after six months in a job. As well as the numerous studies that firms have commissioned to explore the issue, there has been even more commentary and guidance, often from law firms. While we should always view each of these in context, adding however much salt we deem necessary to season their findings, what is always interesting when you have a media pile-in like this is to sift through it all to look for patterns, common themes and contrasts. Here are just five:
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