Looking at legal gray areas

In this post I'd like to take a look at some of the legal issues i ran into during my BYOD research. Because this trend is still relatively new, it still has quite a lot of gray areas. One of them being the legal implications of facilitating any kind of employee owned device program. Let's do a quick overview of important things to consider: 
 
Premature resignation of employees participating in the program. 
One of the first challenges i had to tackle while writing the plan to implement an employee-owned device program at my company. This was particularly going to be a problem when it came to the "Buy" version of BYOD. Take in mind the following scenario: One of your employees signs up to take part in your BYOD program and gets the standard stipend to buy his employee-owned notebook. Let's say your agreed stipend would be €1500,- for the device plus 3 years of OEM. The employee decides to buy a high-end €2000,- device. After a year, your employee suddenly resigns. He signed up for the 3 year program and you basically just lost a big sum of money your employee spent on the device. You also can't claim the notebook, because of it being your employees personal possession now (take in mind he spent €500,- on it himself too). The way Citrix dealt with this issue, was to retract the remaining amount spent on the device (pro rata) from the employee's last salary. Which sounds like a good solution, when you lives in America. In my current country of residence, this turned out to be much more tricky because of the way our law works. However it seemed possible in the end, it's really something to look into, and take up clearly in the BYOD contract which you sign two-ways before your employee enters the program.

How to deal with theft, damage or accidental loss of devices?
This question is more of an insurance problem than it really is a law-related issue. An important thing to look in to is how your company's insurance looks at devices that aren't company-owned. What if for example a fire breaks out in your office building, damaging a lot of property. Or what about burglary or other potential risks that are usually unforeseen. In the regular situation, insurance would probably cover at least part of the damage. But will this also be the case in a BYOD situation?

How about liability and responsibility when it comes to unwanted data and security risks?

When talking about BYOD, this is a subject that comes up often as a flaw in the concept. People often tell me an employee-owned device program increases the risks on bringing in illegal or malicious software and other unwanted data within your company's network. To a certain degree, they are probably right. Because devices are now used for both business and personal use, it does add a certain risk factor. But that doesn't necessarily mean that nothing can be done here. Other than technical measures (security, security, security), there are options in the legal part too. Something to take up in the contract would be for example rules against illegal software, music and movies. Other than that, employees can be required to meet a certain standard of security on their devices (think about encryption, anti-virus, updates, password requirements). Fact does remain that things like this can be difficult to enforce and control.

Business critical information

Nowadays, it has become quite normal for people to receive e-mail on not just notebooks, but also their smartphones. When an employee leaves your company, in many cases there is still a lot of company critical information saved on the mobile device. The same happens when a phone or notebook gets stolen or goes missing. There's definitely a risk of this information hitting the streets. At least in Dutch law, it states that by no means, companies are allowed to (remotely) erase data from an employee's personal device, even when the employee is resigning. Situations like this should be taken into account when you start forming the rules and contracts of your program.

The Motorola Atrix takes BYOD to a whole new level

One of the projects that caught my attention from the start, was the Nirvana phone. This was a concept started by Citrix, in cooperation with OpenKernel Labs. The idea behind this device was just to plug the phone into a monitor and connect to a keyboard via Bluetooth. Instead of using a mouse, the phone could be used as a touchpad. As a result, you'd have a full desktop experience without actually having a full desktop. 

Recently, Motorola gave this concept a whole new dimension by releasing their Atrix 4G phone. At it's releasedate (March 6th), this was the first dual-core Android phone, and was dubbed by Motorola as "the world's most powerful smartphone". The thing has a 4" qHD screen, as well as 1GB of RAM paired with a 1930mAh battery to keep it all running. There's a lot more to say about this monster of a device, but it's a lot more interesting to see it in action in the video on top of this post. Currently, AT&T is selling a package of docking plus phone, for $499,99.

Reasons for implementing an employee-owned device program

There can be a lot of reasons to start thinking about implementing a form of BYOD. In this post i'll talk about some of the possible benefits you can gain by facilitating an employee-owned device program. Some of the advantages are subject to which form of BYOD is used. Other than that, how big (or small) of an advantage you gain from starting with BYOD, depends a lot on your company as well; BYOD is not for everyone.

As promised, here's the list of advantages:

• Empowering your employees. Giving your employees the freedom to use their own devices, instead of forcing them to use the corporate standard, will lead to more satisfied, and overall happier employees.
• Better productivity. Employees being happy in their work will automatically lead to them being more productive.
• Shifting the scope of your IT department. Employees using their own devices, will have less problems using them, because mostly, they're already familiar with them. In most cases they also take better care of their own equipment in comparison to a company-owned device. With OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) service and warranty, desktop management will be effectively outsourced. This way, the IT department will be able to focus on other things such as infrastructure and security.
• Flexibility. For both business and personal use, employees can now enjoy maximum flexibility, because it only concerns one device. Facilitating BYOD often results in a flexible workforce. And not just your own employees benefit from this, it also gets significantly easier to hire external people, interns and other temporary employees. 
• The new world of work. Another trend that gained huge popularity over the past years is the new world of work. An employee-owned device program could definitely be a part of this.
•  Recruitment tool. The extra working condition of being allowed to bring your own devices to work can be very attracting to potential new employees. Especially to millennials (generation Y), who usually recently graduated from university and are already used to working with their own equipment during their study. 
• Branding. In the current state that BYOD is in, joining in on the trend can mean a boost to the image of your company. The company will be seen as innovative and could even serve as an example for other businesses.

Of course, implementing BYOD also comes with various risks and possible disadvantages, which i'll talk about in a next blogpost. For now, feel free to add any other advantages that i might have forgot to mention, in the comments below.

Citrix CIO Paul Martine talks about implementing a BYOC program

Even though this presentation is almost a year of age now, i still think it's very informative and useful to watch if you're considering to implement a BYOC-like program. For 50 minutes, Martine talks about how Citrix looks back on starting their BYOC pilot, gives some useful insights and talks about important things to take into account when implementing your own BYOC program. The whole presentation can be found here.

Terminology

Ever since i started my byod research project back in August 2010, I've seen an increasing use of the many (somewhat confusing) acronyms that relate to the bring your own device concept. Let's go through some of the shortforms, what they mean and where they came from:

· Bring your own computer (BYOC) is probably what started the whole hype. This term was first used by Citrix, back in early 2008. They ran a pilot for a small group of employees, giving them a stipend to buy their own laptop, instead of using the corporate standard.

· Bring your laptop to work was Microsoft's version of BYOC. Initially, employees weren't given a sum of money, but they did however get to bring their personal laptops into the office to replace the corporate standard.

· Bring/Buy your own device (BYOD) is the most commonly used term for this trend as of today. It basically is the same as Citrix' original BYOC program, but instead of just notebooks, this covers other devices too (mainly phones and tablet-pc's) as stated in my last blogpost the B can stand for either "Bring" or "Buy".

· Employee-owned device program/policy are just different names for the same thing. A lot of companies experimenting with BYOD gave it their own fancy names.

· Bring your own PC (BYOPC) is another widely used term, but i've somehow seen people in the Netherlands use this one a lot as of lately.

Bring or buy; An introduction to BYOD

To put first things first, i'll start off briefly explaining the basics of the bring your own device concept. This trend made it's way into the world in many forms and variations, but i'll attempt to explain the two basic types.

As of today, there are two types of BYOD, each having their own variations;

• Bring your own device;
• Buy your own device.

It's only a one-word difference, but as you'll find out more and more, a difference not to be overlooked. The first of two variations (Bring), means employees now literally bring their own personally purchased devices (e.a. notebooks, smartphones, tablets) into the office and use them for work purposes. In most cases, IT management will provide employees and their own devices basic support. The bring your own device concept is most commonly used in companies hiring lots of jobbers, interns and other external staff. Both the business and their employees benefit from this scenario. The company doesn't have to purchase expensive hardware and software-licenses, and the employees will be happier using their own equipment and tools, that they're already familiar with in the first place.

In the latter of variations, the "B" stands for "Buy", which comes down to the following: Every employee that's willing to participate in the BYOD program, receives a set budget that they can spend to buy the hardware they prefer to use for work purposes. With this sum of money he could, for example, buy an expensive smartphone and a relatively cheap notebook, or vice versa. This way, companies facilitating the "Buy" variation of byod, empower their users to make their own choices in the devices they use, leading to a happier and more productive workforce (more on this in an upcoming blogpost). As of lately, businesses using the "Buy"variation, split up their budget, giving employees a separate fee for notebooks as well as (smart)phones.

In the end, you'll find out almost every company has it's different views, perceptions, and definitions on what "byod" exactly is and how it should be implemented and used. This, however, are the basic forms of "byod". In future blog posts, I'll talk about more variations on the two, and about how various early adopters implemented them.

First post!

Earlier this year, i graduated the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, writing a thesis on a variety of subjects including the consumerization of IT and the "bring your own" concept. After my study, i started my job at Nobel, a Dutch company where i also wrote my graduation thesis.

Because the earlier stated topics still have my interest, i'd like to share some of the research and work i've done in this blog. Other than that, i'll try to keep you up to date on the "bring your own" phenomenon and will occasionally discuss other related topics. 

To start off with something light, heres a Dilbert comic that i like to use to refute one of the major arguments against the byod concept.