MightyRecruiterConsumerization of IT: What it Means for Hiring
All of the advances witnessed in information technology in recent years have one thing in common: they all began outside of the workplace. While new connectivity standards and the electronic devices that support them offer several commercial advantages, their application to business is almost always a back-end result. First, they are introduced into the consumer market as developers attempt to ïtest the watersï in order to gauge interest. As these technologies begin to be adopted and take hold in average everyday life, only then does the demand for them to migrate to the business world begin.
However, in today’s business world, where data integrity is so important, this consumerization of IT can present a number of different security concerns. Thus, your company, like many others, may be well-justified in your hesitancy to fully come on board with it. After all, your being able to monitor the technologies used by your employees to access businesses critical data offers you increased control over the use of such information. Unfortunately, there must come a time when every business IT manager must realize that such control never truly exists.
What Message are You Sending
Why Because if the consumerization of IT has taught us anything, it’s that employees will use the technologies available to them to make their jobs easier, whether those tools have been approved by your organization or not. If you take a moment to contemplate the intent behind this activity, you’ll quickly see that you as an executive or manager may not even want to discourage it. After all, who can fault an employee for taking the initiative to be more engaged You yourself could even be encouraging it in an indirect way.
By giving an employee a laptop or a cell phone for business use, you are, in essence, encouraging him or her to engage in work outside of the workplace when appropriate. If that’s the expectation, what is he or she to do when any limitations inherent with those devices hinder his or her ability to meet it Consider the following example: an employee, while awaiting a flight at the airport, is asked to call in and participate in a meeting. In his or her bag is a company-issued laptop along with his or her own personal tablet. In terms of being able to work efficiently and effectively in that particular setting, which device do you think he or she would think to use Here is the great conundrum posed by the consumerization of IT.
Embracing Consumerization May Yield More Engaged Employees
What’s more, today’s employees are coming into organizations with the expectation that they will have the discretion to use whatever tools are at their disposal in order to do their jobs. Any attempts made by an employer to mandate the use of available technologies may be taken the wrong way. You may see it as simply mitigating a security risk; they, on other hand, could view it as micro-managing. If the idea that they’ll be limited in their capacity to fulfill their job requirements to the best of their abilities is conveyed to them in some way, prospective employees may just choose to seek opportunities with other organizations that allow them more operating freedoms. Where your goal is to find engaged employees who don’t need to be told when and where to apply their unique skills, then taking a long look into whether or not your policies are sending that message is definitely something that you should consider.
Rather than fighting against the tide of the consumerization of IT, more and more companies in your position are choosing to use it to their advantage by implementing a BYOD (ïbring your own deviceï) policy. This allows you to clearly set information access standards right from the moment when a new employee is hired. The luxury of using his or her own smartphone, tablet, or laptop is given, provided that he or she is able to show it has adequate security measures in place to ensure the protection of your data. The advantages of following this philosophy are two-fold: a new employee is empowered with more flexibility to do his or her job right from the get-go, and you are able to reduce your training and equipment costs.
Those executives, managers, and HR consultants who fail to recognize the impact that the consumerization of IT has on today’s workplace risk losing the best and brightest candidates to competitors who seemingly allow for more employee freedoms. Yet fully embracing this idea also brings with it inherent risks if you don’t have the right people working for you. Fortunately, the tools made available to you through Mighty Recruiter can help you to identify who those people are early on in the hiring process.