BYOD (Bring Your Own Device): Could employees be expected to use their own devices for work? Lower operating costs, greater flexibility and increased productivity are a few reasons some business leaders have been touting to argue for why companies should stop purchasing workplace devices and make employees use their own instead. Although BYOD started making headlines about a decade ago, the concept has recently gained new momentum as work from home (WFH) policies upended many companies' ways of doing business — and the rigid safety protocols that undergird their operations — in favor of more flexible working arrangements. While the issue is certainly not yet settled, an ongoing debate in the world of IT and business strategy over the future of remote and hybrid work continues.

Proponents of BYOD emphasize the potential for productivity gains: Though there is little research into how personal devices affect workplace behaviors, advocates of BYOD anticipate improvements in productivity among employees who get to choose the technology that best suits their style of work as a huge draw for asking employees to provide their own work devices. "By enabling employees to securely and easily access corporate data on their own device, productivity levels will naturally increase,” Mark Coates, EMEA VP at Good Technology told TechRadar in 2020. Others believe that offering flexibility over the use of devices will improve staff motivation.

Company-issued devices often aren’t at the cutting edge: The rapid evolution of tech and the reportedly strong preference of employees towards the devices they use for work is making requirements to stick to standard-issue corporate devices “a losing battle,” Joe Donnici, VP of Core IT at Quintiles, writes for Network World. This is because regularly delivering top-tier equipment to staff may be difficult for most companies, he says.

But at the root of this movement is cost-cutting strategies for business: Companies that adopt BYOD policies might be able to cut out some of the huge costs associated with hardware purchases and software licensing for company-issued devices. “Apart from productivity gains, Comprehensive BYOD can pay for itself in hard cost savings—primarily in hardware, support, and telecommunications costs,” Joseph Bradely, Cisco’s VP of digital and IoT services, wrote in a blog post in 2013. The tech giant estimated in 2016 that companies could on average save some USD 350 annually for every employee hired using their own device.

Employees in rich countries seem to (generally) be on board: A US Census Bureau Gallup survey from 2015 found that 72% of smartphone and tablet owners in the US would be willing to use their devices to send work-related emails and many were open to using personal devices for other work-related tasks as well.

But this figure falls dramatically when the question is framed differently: Less than a quarter of respondents were positive about companies using their devices to collect data when it was framed as a cost-cutting measure for businesses.

The question of security is crucial: Protecting sensitive corporate and personal data, ensuring legal compliance and maintaining support for a wider range of devices are among the many challenges the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) lists in its guidance on BYOD strategies. Leaked data, malware and unsafe downloads have also been listed among the top concerns cyber security professionals associate with current BYOD arrangements. Some 22% of organizations polled in a survey (pdf) by cybersecurity firm Bitglass last year said that employees using personal devices had downloaded malware over the previous 12 months, and almost half said they were unable to monitor whether malware had been downloaded, a problem the report described as potentially “fatal.”

And personal privacy is a big concern too: Encroaching on personal privacy is also a concern that might arise when employees begin to rely primarily on their personal devices for work, according to the NCSC. This is an especially difficult challenge to overcome when employees are plugged into private networks and have company-provided security software installed on their computers designed to protect critical business information. This was a common concern in the Gallup survey, where many respondents expressed unease at their employers being able to access personal content on their devices.

Is it actually cost-effective? When it comes to protecting important data it might actually cost more to provide IT support for a wider range of devices and operating systems, especially if the company is committing to shoulder the costs for hardware repairs, according to the NCSC.

For some of us, BYOD is already here: If you think about how often you use your personal phone for work-related purposes, you already have a foot in the door of BYOD. Some 82% of companies polled in Bitglass’ report permitted BYOD to “some extent.” Whether the concept will become more widely adopted by companies will depend largely on whether solutions can be found to address security concerns.