Flexible working devices can shift IT priorities elsewhere
By Chris Taylor
02/11/2011
Employee desire to work from a mobile device is offering IT departments an excellent opportunity to offload support for them, says Cisco UK's chief technology officer.
Citing research conducted by the networking and communications giant, Ian Foddering says younger workers would rather use their own consumer electronic devices to conduct their day jobs on.
In Cisco's survey, which looked at attitudes towards consumerisation, social media use, and flexible working in the workplace, 45 per cent of young workers said that they would rather accept a lower paid job with more device flexibility above a higher paid job with less flexibility. This view was also supported by 40 per cent of students polled.
A staggering 81 per cent of college students, ages between 18 and 23, said that they even expected to have choice over the device they used in their job, reports Computing.co.uk.
Foddering says that these statistics suggest it is in a company's best interests to let employees manage their own support for these devices. However, for those uncomfortable with this opinion, remote systems management could be used to keep devices in check.
"The company does need to have an adequate governance model for these devices, but responsibility for upkeep and maintenance should ultimately be with the worker," said Foddering, cited Ready-Sourcing.com.
"Flexible working is not a technical challenge, it's a cultural one. Not enabling this would see companies miss the opportunity to tap into this young, highly motivated and capable workforce," he added.
