Workplace Mobility: Balancing Convenience With Security

While it is quite evident that technological innovations in the past have been pathbreaking, the advent of workplace mobility will definitely be the next revolution to impact corporates as an emerging technology trend. It will continue to enable and empower our daily work lives. With more and more businesses embracing the potential of a mobile workforce and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to work trend, managing devices is more complex than ever before. Corporates today are constantly planning for various accelerating mobility trends that will shape the future of workplaces and change the way the employees live and work.

The predominantly GenY workforce wants to manage their documents and emails, at their own pace, anywhere, anytime. According to a recent market study most of the GenY workers are increasingly bringing their own devices to the workplace to be more efficient and are much happier when they are allowed to do so.

The ‘Consumerization of Business'-often referred to as the ‘Consumerization of IT'-is a trend representing a shift of mobile technology ownership and responsibility from corporate to personal. The consumerization of the enterprise is all about personal choice, as opposed to the corporate mandates on what employees can and cannot do or use for their work. This can certainly be a win-win situation.

Efforts need to be made in understanding the individual versus corporate responsibility. An important component of finding the right balance in the workplace is training and culture, all predicated on having the right business policies for mobility. However, we need to make sure that the mobility policies are not so strict that employees become less effective. The challenge lies in striking the right balance between maintaining security and control for IT, while preserving the user experience of the device for the employee.

Workplace of the Future

Workers are increasingly mobile, and a majority of enterprises are focused on supporting the growing number of employees who use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to do their work at the office, at home, and while traveling. Corporate mobility momentum will continue as an increasing number of employees purchase and use their personal smartphones for work-related activities, and a growing number of enterprises support bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs to cost efficiently mobilize their workforce.

Today's space utilization strategies are not about squeezing more workers into ever-smaller spaces. Rather, they are about solving the problems of office space-adopting alternative workplace strategies to accommodate an increasingly mobile work force that isn't necessarily working in the office all the time, and to attract and retain a new generation of workers who prefer flexible work environments.

Mobile and electronic digital nomads may become the defining behavior for the next generation of global knowledge workers. And thanks to rapidly advancing wireless capabilities, cloud computing, and next-generation smartphone and tablet technologies, our mobile knowledge workers will become less location dependent and the corporate workplace will potentially become location agnostic. Using these technologies in ways that benefit both the corporation and the employees will reduce costs, boost productivity, and improve the attraction and retention of key valuable talent.