The streets are getting a little less congested, the buses have a little more breathing room and the offices feel just a little emptier. Summer is officially here, which means employees are looking to spend more time in the sun, rather than being cooped up in the office.
But for some organizations, this doesn’t mean productivity will grind to a complete halt. The Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) movement has allowed more workers the freedom to bring more personal devices into the workplace than ever before. This can not only boost employee morale, but it also enables employees to stay connected to the office on-the-go.
During the hot summer months, when the cottage is calling your employees’ names and children are home on vacation, the flexibility that BYOD offers is never more valuable to your business.
Recently, Cisco announced the findings of a U.S. study of 600 IT and business leaders. The results indicated that 95 per cent of responding organizations permit employee-owned devices in some way, shape or form in the workplace. The study also found that the average number of connected devices per knowledge worker is expected to reach 3.3 in just two years from now, up from an average of 2.8 in 2012.
Workers using their laptop, tablet and smartphone to stay connected and collaborate with peers while away from the office is quickly becoming the norm. Over three-fourths of IT leaders surveyed in the study classified BYOD as a somewhat or extremely positive development for their company. Additionally, respondents said employees rank “device choice” and the “desire to perform personal activities at work and work activities during personal time” as major factors in their support of BYOD.
At the same time, these IT leaders saw major challenges that need to be addressed in order to give employees more control over their work experience.
This is where our partner community comes in.
We are now offering a set of fully tested and validated “Smart Solutions” for partners to help CIOs and IT leaders remove the cost and complexity associated with mobility. The solutions are built on a common technology framework that is aimed at increasing business efficiency, ensuring security and giving employees the freedom to work the way they want. Combined with the expertise of our Canadian partner community, these solutions will help your business prepare for the “multiple device” employee.
BYOD Smart Solution – Want a one-stop-shop solution to BYOD? Our BYOD Smart Solution provides end-to-end lifecycle management to help organizations transform their workspace. And our partners can help your business secure and manage your data with unified policies, the right network infrastructure to keep it safe and collaboration tools such as Cisco WebEx and Cisco Jabber.
VXI Smart Solution – This desktop virtualization system spans Cisco’s Data Center, Borderless Networks and Collaboration architectures. It gives enterprises the ability to run collaboration software in a fully integrated, open and validated desktop virtualization solution, and our partners are there to help you every step of the way.
Remote Expert Smart Solution – Rounding out the new offerings is an integrated solution that will let companies engage in virtual face-to-face consultation via immersive video and sharing features. The Cisco Remote Expert will give users access to the most appropriate subject matter experts whether they are at work, at home or on the road. Backed by services from our certified partners, this can truly be a game-changer for businesses that want to offer expertise to any customer, anywhere.
My colleague and Cisco Canada President Nitin Kawale has often spoken about the importance of “work-life blending,” which encourages organizations to give more flexibility to their employees. That includes working from home more often and offering flexible working hours so employees can catch their children’s dance recital or school soccer game.
With these new partner-led offerings, Cisco and our partners are making the Unified Workspace easier than ever to achieve. We’re help creating 21st-century workspaces for 21st-century workers.
Now go enjoy the summer, it’ll be September before you know it.
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One thing that is shadowed when we talk about BYOD and the line of work life balance. That line is quickly eroding to the point we are always connected, the only time is when we are sleeping (and then for IT that’s questionable). A lot of companies are embracing it because they know they are able to squeeze just that little bit more productivity out of their employees. It’s a very slippery slope when people say they put family first yet say things like “I just gotta check this one email”. Been there, done that.
While nobody is necessarily putting the pressure to work longer, us as a society are making it acceptable by moving forward with initiatives like this. The funny thing in this whole era is it’s us, the end user, wanting to be connected to the corporate network that is only doing it to ourselves.
Interesting times ahead…