How to Increase Employee Engagement by Adopting BYOD Policies

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smartphoneIn today’s increasingly connected world of instant responses and non-stop communication, employees should not be bounded by 20th century time constraints. E-mail introduced a new standard to workplace interactions; the rising popularity of BYOD in the workplace provides even more convenience and ease to work activity completion, at the same time speeding up response-time expectations.

Employees should not have to wait until they get to the office and their computer to log into their work system environments. This is especially true in global companies that work across time zones. The traditional 9-5 workdays don’t apply when an employee at the Denver office of a multinational enterprise needs to send a file to a co-worker based in Singapore at 8 PM MST.

Make BYOD Engagement Work for Your Organization

1)     Implement social tools that allow teams and managers to be in instant contact with one another. Push notifications, SMS, chat messages and video are great ways to connect, share and collaborate. They are helpful when a team member is out of the office and needs to report back. In addition, these tools are better at capturing their attention than e-mails; e-mail is more cumbersome to read and respond to on mobile, and many go unnoticed.

2)      Use enterprise apps to save employees the time, hassle and data of having to log into a web-based corporate portal. Activities like employee referral programs can be easily optimized for mobile, as was concluded in GooodJob’s recent “Mobile Recruiting – 2013” survey. By their very nature, referrals originate outside of the office, in social settings. By providing employees with the ability to access your referral program and make referrals from their mobile devices, they will be better equipped to refer a friend they meet up with over the weekend.

3)      Together with the IT department, write down your official BYOD policies and distribute them to all employees. This sends the message that usage of their personal devices for work is acceptable – and it encourages more employees to jump on board.

4)      On-the-go access gives team leaders real-time updates on analytics and metrics. This is a crucial element in many companies, as it allows managers to stay on top of developments as they happen – and they don’t need to be sitting behind their desks to be updated.

5)      Mobile engagement is also helpful when training new employees, as an advanced learning tool. It saves time and money, because the training takes place on their own devices, and not in a classroom setting which requires additional resources.

Conclusion

Empower your workforce by promoting engagement techniques via their mobile devices, and put yourself ahead of your competitors. This is particularly important in workplaces that are aiming to develop a better work-life balance model for their employees. Providing flexible access enables them to achieve a work pace that fits with their schedules, and still remain engaged and updated on their tasks.

By Assaf Eisenstein