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February Question of the Month
For our organization, the primary focus for 2025 is implementing an effective BYOD program that strikes the right balance between providing mobile employees with the necessary access and ensuring the organization maintains adequate security. What would an ideal solution look like? Should we develop it internally or purchase an existing solution?
- Bill Alexander, Abbate Insurance Associates, Inc.
ANSWER
Hi Bill,
Andrew Bunyi, Sales Engineer at Rhodian Group here – great questions! When it comes to setting up a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) program, balancing accessibility and security is indeed crucial. What that looks like for each agency and whether they choose to build or buy (or both) depends on multiple factors.
Here are a few key considerations:
- Time and Resources: Building a customized BYOD program can be time-consuming and resource intensive. Assess whether your organization has the internal expertise and capacity to develop and maintain such a program, or if finding a solution provider would be more efficient.
- Security Needs: Evaluate the specific security requirements of your organization, including those specified by compliance regulations. If you partner with a third-party, make sure that they offer additional security customizations to meet your unique requirements.
- Virtual vs Physical Desktops: One of the most significant considerations outside of budget, whether you decide to implement virtual desktops or have employees work off their own devices in a BYOD scenario greatly impacts the security of your data. If you don’t implement virtual desktops, do you have strong enough cybersecurity measures to make sure data isn’t compromised is a device is lost or stolen?
Ultimately, the decision to build or buy a BYOD program should align with your organization's long-term goals, resource availability, and security needs. Careful consideration of these factors will help ensure that your mobile workforce has the access they need while maintaining the necessary security protocols. And the discussion doesn’t end there!
Regarding the topic of remote work in general, we invited Chris Cline, Executive Director at the Agents Council for Technology (ACT), to share his insights on some of the less concrete, but still equally important, factors to consider.
Here are just a few thoughts he shared with us:
- Culture: increasingly, today’s employees look to align their work with companies and professions that align with their beliefs and, regardless of their work location, largely want to be a part of something in their own unique way. It is increasingly important for companies of all sizes to understand this and to be transparent about their mission, goals, and values. If the company embraces different working locations and models for their employees, its important have defined plans that likely differ by employee location/model to drive the desired culture effectively and in a balanced way for all employees.
- Employee experience: Building upon the company’s culture and established approach to employment locations, it is important to consider how remote and/or hybrid environments impact critical employment experiences such as onboarding new employees, ongoing training, process and work quality audits and discussion, team building, company updates (results, plans, changes….). Studies vary in their specifics, but it is largely agreed that remote employees do need to hear things more frequently and in different formats than those who are in the office. And they need a mechanism to process the information and safely ask questions as they often miss the proverbial water cooler chats.
- Leadership: Perhaps baked into all of the above, it is important to think differently about how you and your leaders do lead the team based on how you’ve decided to allow employees to work in combination with your defined culture. Leading remote employees is different than leading employees on premise and leaders have an obligation and expectation to leverage available tracking/auditing tools, collaboration tools, and employee performance and development tools to enable each employee the best chance for success regardless of where they work. This includes timely and relevant feedback, both positive reinforcement and coaching opportunities, and making sure each employee knows what’s expected of them, how they’ll be measured, how they’ll be compensated, and that they have the tools to be successful.
There is no perfect approach beyond thinking through a fair and balanced approach that aligns with your culture, employee and customer base, and one that you will define and manage.
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Thank you to Bill Alexander of Abbate Insurance Associates, Inc. for the great question, and thank you to Chris Cline at ACT for helping us answer!
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