* Employee-liable mobile strategies have risks
A recent Wireless Alert pointed out a growing trend for organizations to have employees buy their own mobile devices and use them both for personal and work activity. This approach begs a few questions with respect to the enterprise’s overall mobile strategy.
The benefits driving the shift to personal-liable devices are obvious. Employees aren’t keen on carrying separate devices for work and personal use, but they want the device(s) they like, and that’s not necessarily what their company sanctions and supports. And budget-strapped companies can push the significant capital cost of devices and, in some cases, service plans onto employees.
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The industry frequently discusses “personal-liable” and “corporate-liable” ownership. Some people are talking about who purchases the device only. Others are referring to who pays the voice and data services bills each month. Still others might mean both.
It’s probably a good idea to get a “standard” for what these terms mean. They have come to matter because of a decades-old IRS definition of corporate-issued cell phones as “listed property” — something that can be used easily for both work and personal use, like a company car — that has tax implications for employees and employers. The IRS has recently started enforcing this, particularly in some universities, so some employers want to wash their hands of mobile device ownership and, sometimes, the service plans, too.
So the employer is potentially rid of capex, support costs, potential service costs and the specter of the IRS. Sounds pretty good, but for years we’ve been talking about enterprises using mobility “strategically.” That implies some sort of blueprint for getting people and devices to connect to certain resources because connectivity boosts productivity, which has a financial reward.
The presumption is that everyone who’s anyone has smart devices of their own that they can use to connect to work resources. But what of the exceptions?
You can’t compel an employee to purchase a smartphone or laptop or both and pay voice and data service charges for it every month. And what if a device falls in the toilet and the employee doesn’t replace it for a while, remaining unconnected and presumably less productive?
Usually we think of the security and management issues associated with employee-owned mobile devices connecting to the corporate network. Those are indeed the primary issues, but there’s also the difficulty in leveraging mobility strategically if you put the decision to even have a mobile device into the hands of the employee.
