The Great Resignation changed how companies approach attracting and retaining talent. These days, it’s not enough to offer a competitive salary and traditional benefits like health insurance and a 401k. Employees have put an increased focus on flexibility – and the tools that support it.
Phones and tablets aren’t the flashiest perk a company can offer. Still, they’re the type of lifestyle benefit that offers clear value for employees – and helps address pain points for companies that provide them.
Mobile device benefits ensure all employees have equal access to digital technologies that fit their lives at work and at home. What’s more: Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) providers help employers provide mobile benefits while increasing security and controlling costs.
Here, I’ll discuss three reasons companies should adopt DaaS to provide mobile benefits for employees.
#1: DaaS Subscriptions Support Scalable, Mobile-Powered Work
Increasingly, employees use mobile devices for work they used to complete on computers. For Millennials and Gen Z in particular, being able to read emails, write reports, and attend meetings via apps like Google Workspace isn’t just a convenience. It’s an expectation.
On the one hand, recognizing this new reality and meeting employees where they’re at is low-hanging fruit. Mobile devices are increasingly expensive. Paying for them effectively increases an employee’s monthly compensation. That’s an easily recognized (and appreciated) gesture.
On the other hand, technology changes quickly. Upfront purchases may be expensive for individual employees. But they’re even more expensive for employers who buy and maintain the most up-to-date tech for their entire workforce.
As a company grows, the costs of purchasing technology can become prohibitive. With DaaS, however, employers don’t purchase mobile devices like smartphones and tablets for their employees. Instead, each device is leased at a low monthly fee.
This means subscriptions can be scaled to fit a company’s expanding (or contracting) needs. And subscriptions can be further tailored to empower employees with the tech that best fits their jobs.
In fact, businesses can at all points customize their subscription. DaaS partners offer a living lineup of the most up-to-date Android and iOS devices. So employers can meet the increasing preference for mobile-powered work by offering the mobile devices employees prefer to use.
#2: DaaS Streamlines Workflows Across Ecosystems
It’s a common experience: a license for editing software works on iOS but not Android. Or text written in Windows comes up garbled when opened on an iPad. DaaS, however, minimizes compatibility issues.
By offering up-to-date devices loaded with software selected by each individual client, DaaS providers help streamline workflows and minimize error. So whether employees prefer Android or iOS, phone or a tablet, they can work together efficiently across ecosystems.
For employees, this is a benefit employers too often overlook. The more familiar a format, the more comfortable it is to work in. And the more comfortable employees are on their device, they’re more likely to use it – increasing productivity.
Unfortunately, the inverse is true, too. Give an iPhone user a Pixel and it’s possible they’ll put it in a drawer – or more problematically, use their own phone to access and review the next reconciliation report.
But personal devices are less likely to integrate with employer-maintained systems. And software licenses are expensive, so employees may only have access to incompatible substitutes (try editing certain files without access to Adobe – it’s a pain, if not impossible).
And if you use a VPN or firewall, employees using a personal device may not even be able to access work files at all. That’s because unencrypted personal devices are outside of your company’s IT security perimeter.
And if an employee does succeed in using a device outside your perimeter to access files, they’re (however inadvertently) putting your company’s data at risk.
#3: DaaS Helps You Secure All of Your Company’s Data
Technological services are only as good as their approach to data security. That’s why DaaS providers may put a premium on protecting data.
How? DaaS providers might have a dedicated mobile device management team to help companies install and manage software that can…
– Restrict app access and downloads.
– Remotely lock or wipe devices.
– Enforce password policies.
– Push software updates.
– Protect against malware.
Your DaaS provider may include these services in your subscription, eliminating the need to pay extra for increased security. What’s more: mobile devices leased through a DaaS partner can be partitioned to support multiple profiles. With a separation between each profile, malicious software accidentally accessed on a personal profile won’t threaten your business’ data.
So employees can securely have simultaneous work and personal profiles on a device you provide. And that further increases the likelihood of your data staying secure.
DaaS Supports the New Normal of Mobile-Powered Work
When you provide mobile benefits for your employees, you do more than pay for their phone or tablet.
True, with DaaS you offer employees (and your business) some financial relief. But the right DaaS partner also offers comprehensive services that seamlessly integrate financing, insurance, and professional device lifecycle management.
So you won’t have to hire and manage extra IT employees or more folks in finance to reconcile mobile accounts.
And that means the new normal of mobile-powered work reduces your workload, too.
About Falk Sonnenschmidt
Falk Sonnenschmidt is the Senior Vice President of Strategy at Everphone, a device-as-a-service (DaaS) company that offers hassle-free device management for one low monthly subscription. Sonnenschmidt oversees Everphone’s U.S. business and heads its Strategy department, managing OEM and carrier partnerships with Deutsche Telekom, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft.
