Chief Efficiency Officer

“The BYOD phenomenon, besides other things, has shown the CIO his place. They were tormentors earlier, and believed IT was their fiefdom.”

I was not surprised when a friend of mine who works in a leading tyre manufacturing company said this. I had faced similar challenges in my office when some new joinees wanted to get their own laptops to work with. My God, the IT department would just not allow that!

While CIOS today may feel that their hold over all IT decisions, including what computers their employees use, is slipping, they should look at the positive side. If you allow employees to use devices and applications of their choice, happiness, satisfaction and efficiency levels go up. This is what the latest research commissioned by Vmware has revealed.

Aptly called the “New Way of Work Study 2012”, undertaken in 10 Asia-pacific countries, the study reveals that more and more workers are bringing their personal smartphones and tablets, and social media to work, and this makes them 72% more productive. The surprising finding was that BYOD is becoming highly prevalent in India, where 77% respondents are working on their personal devices in offices. This when 82% in India are provided with a portable device from their employer. And the best part is that 66% say they find work less stressful when they use devices of their choice.

There are some other interesting survey findings too that are a clear pointer to the emerging needs and trends. For instance, most companies surveyed (97%) are aware that their employees bring their personal devices to work, but 44% of them do not provide any support at the corporate level. Laptops (94%) and smartphones (53%) are some of the most commonly used devices for work-related purposes. A majority of the respondents felt that using self-chosen web-based software/apps raises efficiency (76%), accelerates problem solving (71%) and enhances communication (71%) at the workplace. Most respondents (76%) use web-based software or apps for work or business purpose almost every day which coincided with 70% of personal usage.

Clearly, the CIO’S role is expanding. The CIO is not only ensuring a great IT infrastructure for the employees, but is directly contributing to higher employee satisfaction and efficiency. But a lot more needs to be done because 47% of the respondents in the survey feel that the work environment limits their ability to be more efficient.

Industry senior, T Srinivasan, who heads Vmware in India, believes that with the consumerization of IT, the mobile worker is becoming a virtual worker for whom location and device are becoming less relevant. As these virtual workers define the IT culture at the workplace, technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing services, and security will help companies adapt. While enhanced efficiency and happiness is the end result, the main motive why employees bring their personal portable devices to work is mobility (47%) and connectedness (39%).

The question is that, if all this results in lesser corporate spending on hardware purchase because employees are getting their own device, will that money saved be deployed in perhaps better software or connectivity solutions, rather than be stashed away?

Let’s see.