California is one of the states (if you live in the United States) that likes to experiment with the laws they pass, both legislatively and policies created by judges during court cases. Leaving the political considerations to another forum, a California appeals court decision related to cell-phone usage may have a much wider impact on the issue of BYOD. Here are the facts.
California's Court of Appeals ruled that when employees are using their personal cell phones for work they must be reimbursed by the employer. While this may seem common sense to some of us, the ruling may have greater implications to how companies and their IT departments handle mobile devices in the work place. The ruling applies to cell phone calls, but could easily be extended to include data usage as well. Could this ruling have a stifling impact on California companies who no longer want to extend BYOD perks to employees? Here are some items worth considering.
Privilege of BYOD
It is generally accepted that BYOD, as a concept, is a trend that could be widely defined as a perk or privilege to the end-user. Meaning, BYOD was never about corporations slipping a fast one by their users. To summarize the trend in a single sentence, users were tired of being forced to use outdated devices when their personal devices were much more appealing and easy to use. Hence, users started, slowly at first, to use their personal devices when performing corporate functions. Now comes this ruling saying employers must compensate users and we come full circle to the reason why employers distributed work mobile devices in the first place.
Setting aside the issue of employee compensation, the BYOD issue for IT departments and managed service providers deals with usage of personal devices and the corporate policies (and even the laws) which could be violated due to haphazard usage practices. So, what is an IT department or MSP to do?
BYOD Best Practices
First, MSPs should ensure that their corporate customers have updated BYOD policies and procedures. This means that in addition to compensation policies, users must be aware of how they can use their personal devices when accessing sensitive data and performing corporate functions.
Second, training must be delivered to ensure that users are complying with these BYOD policies. This is where MSPs can really serve a useful function. Not only can MSPs educate customers and help them develop effective BYOD policies and documentation, but the MSP can also help enforce these policies through their monitoring services.
Third, MSPs need to be incorporating "BYOD" friendly technologies into their tool kits in order to effectively deploy BYOD management solutions. Make sure your RMM, data backup, and other MSP service delivery technologies are working together to manage BYOD scenarios.
