As an employer, you can save yourself a lot of grief by having clear policies in place before you ever offer to pay their cell phone bill.
It all starts innocently enough. You want your employees to have access to their company email and take business calls even when they are not in the office. They already own a smartphone. So, you offer to pay their monthly cell phone bill.
Fast forward a couple of years, and they have chosen to leave your company. Maybe they are even going to a competitor. Who owns all of your business data (emails, contacts, photos, etc.) on their smartphone? It is their personal phone, but you have been paying for their connectivity while they are an employee.
The two options at this point are:
- Erase all of the phone’s data (business and personal) and reset it back to how it came out of the box.
- Let your former employee walk away with all of the business contacts and emails they received while working for you.
And this is not just a problem with smartphones. It applies to iPads and other tablets as well.
Eliminate the Gray Area
As an employer, you can save yourself a lot of grief by having clear policies in place before you ever offer to pay their cell phone bill. You need to be clear about who owns the data and what the expectations are when someone leaves the company, whether voluntarily or not. To not have a clear policy leaves you in a gray area that can create a lot of headaches in the future.
About Skyriver IT
Our goal at Skyriver IT is to deliver frustration-free IT. We provide small and midsize companies with the information needed to make better IT and business decisions. If you would like to discuss how we can help you reduce your IT hassles, please feel free to respond to call (858) 812-9322 or visit www.SkyriverIT.com
