One of the most amazing trends over the last few years is how great organizations have become increasingly concerned about their employees well-being. With these corporations the goal is no longer simply about “maximizing productivity” but instead about improving the ability for their employees to drive better  “work/life integration”.  This is a major shift as it formally recognizes the demands that mobility and “always on” work have put on our personal lives and drives a focus on recognizing that the only solution is a more seamless integration of the two. Simply put life happens and work happens and in this day and age they don’t necessarily have clean boundaries in time or space. 

One of the most critical aspects to driving  the “integration of work and life” is making it easy to accomplish critical work functions on mobile devices. To illustrate my point think of the last time you were out with some friends or family and a critical work action required you to leave and go back to the office or even step away from the table to power up your PC in order to gain access to a critical application. There is no doubt in my mind that this event not only impacted your enjoyment of the evening but also negatively affected those around you. One of the major challenges thus far has been maintaining consumer simplicity while driving enterprise security across corporate applications and data. 

To this end many organizations are now embarking on a strategy of “Business Mobility” in order to allow for seamless access to key business applications and data on any mobile device. A key element of this transformation is the rollout of a “Mobile Enteprise Management” System so that devices can be trusted and granted access to key corporate systems seamlessly. 

This presents an interesting transformation challenge. In the world of corporate issued devices an enterprise didn’t have to ask its employees for permission to manage their device. In today’s world of BYOD permission is required. 

The most interesting part for me in all of this is how easily it is for personal apps (like Waze) to gain approval from their consumers in return for convenience but how difficult it can be to get employees to trust their personal devices to corporate enterprise management systems. Every day we allow yet another consumer application to track our location and even potentially access our contacts and/or calendar but many balk when our own employer asks for permission to manage elements of our device. 

So how can an organization drive through this challenge? 

Over the past month my organization has expanded our mobility initiative to all employees rolling out Airwatch as our Mobile Enteprise Management platform and Workspace One for delivering enterprise applications and data to any device. As an employee I have witnessed a few key actions that have made a huge difference in employee buy-in and adoption –

1 – Complete Transparency with users about how the device will be managed, which elements will be tracked and what data will be accessed. Trust and communication is paramount. 

2- Simple and efficient instructions for users across all device types including screenshots outlining every element of the installation.

3 – Trouble free installation that took less than 30 minutes from start to finish.

4 – A SIGNIFICANT increase in the quality of access to corporate systems post installation. Not only do Airwatch and Workspace One work incredibly well but they delivers a quality of service that is equivalent to being connected to the network.

I’m personally excited and motivated about the flexibility that these new tools have delivered to me and our employee base. I have no doubt that it will drive better engagement with our employees and an ability for them to minimize work related disruptions in their personal lives.