The “Bring your own device” (BYOD) movement is growing in popularity and can be a great help to companies in terms of reducing expense and in getting around-the-clock responsiveness from your employees. It makes sense because most of your employees already own an internet-ready device or three and if they do they probably know how to use it. Your company saves on hardware and on training, right? It’s not quite that easy – if you want to do BYOD the right way you’re going to need a comprehensive training plan to get everyone on the same page on a few important aspects of the BYOD work environment.

Teaching and Training Your Employees in BYOD

WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN TEACHING AND TRAINING YOUR EMPLOYEES IN BYOD

[Step 1] is developing your specific corporate policies around BYOD. This is important for protecting your company’s data assets and for understanding some of the common scenarios that result from implementing BYOD. Addressing your corporate rules and regulations first will also help you outline what BYOD looks like for your firm. You’ll be forced to answer many of the most important basic questions and the following steps will be much simpler to execute. These regulations will provide a framework for much of the training to follow.

[Step 2] will be application-based training. What devices will your employees be bringing and what specific applications on those devices? It’s possible your development team will be creating new applications for different device types or modifying your existing software to suit a new range of access. Developing a new workflow system is great but having employees who truly understand how that system helps them do their work? Priceless. Although employees are likely to have an understanding of their current device they will still need specific training in order to maximize the effect of BYOD on your organization.

[Step 3] is about communicating your corporate policies and regulations clearly to all the employees which BYOD will affect – particularly in regard to security issues. Your data is a corporate asset and you need to ensure it is being handled properly and kept secure while stored on non-company devices. BYOD brings up issues of data security and also those of data ownership and accessibility. You will have already outlined your company’s policies and approaches to these issues and run through a number of hypothetical scenarios (likely with the help of legal counsel) in Step 1, so your goal is simply to ensure that affected employees have a good understanding of these policies before going forward. It’s of the utmost importance to communicate these regulations effectively so that everyone can be in compliance.

[Step 4] is to create support resources for employees to troubleshoot technical issues with their devices/applications or to ask questions about corporate policy. To make your transition smooth you’ll need these resources in place before the BYOD rollout so that your employees know where they need to go for answers. A pre-assigned group of experts who can troubleshoot technical issues and address data security questions both during and after the BYOD transition is key to the continual efficiency of your workforce.

NEXT STEPS FOR TEACHING AND TRAINING YOUR EMPLOYEES IN BYOD

If properly implemented BYOD empowers employees and can save businesses time and money – just remember to prepare accordingly to properly train your office on all the essentials! If you have more questions please don’t hesitate to contact Bi101 for a free consultation on your specific needs! And download a free trial of Microsoft Office 365, which makes it easy to work on multiple devices and PCs.

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