No work phone? Companies tell staff to bring their own

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

When your company’s cyber security team contacts you personally, it is rarely for a positive reason.

In my case, it was to inform me I would no longer be able to access my work emails from my phone. Apparently my device — a second-hand model I bought several years ago — was so old it had become a security risk.

This has simply meant checking my work emails less — many would think hardly a sacrifice. But not all workers without company phones can enjoy this luxury.

“Bring your own device” policies, where staff are allowed to use a personal phone for work-related tasks, are “more common than ever”, according to technology services company Global Relay. In a survey this year, 67 per cent of companies said they operated such policies, up from 51 per cent in 2023.

Employees appear less than enthusiastic about this trend. A poll commissioned by Motorola last year found 62 per cent of respondents agreed that having work items on their personal devices made it difficult for them to relax, while 54 per cent of those without a work smartphone wanted their organisation to provide one.

David D’Souza, director of profession at the CIPD body for HR workers, says this may not make a difference, however. “The bigger challenge is not who owns the device, it’s what you’re doing on that device and where the boundaries are set.”

Some employees may like accessing their work emails on their personal device — it stops them having to carry around two devices and means all their contacts are in one place. But “there’s a big difference in agency between someone who checks their emails at the weekend to ensure they’re not behind and a boss calling someone [on their personal phone] at 1am”, adds D’Souza. 

One public sector worker confirms this, saying they are frequently contacted on their personal phone out of hours — including one late-night message chasing them for a “mental health awareness day selfie” for the organisation’s blog.

Employee wellbeing is not the only worry when it comes to phones. In 2021, JPMorgan paid $200mn to US regulators to settle charges over its Wall Street division using WhatsApp and other apps to communicate with high-profile clients, in breach of federal record-keeping laws.

Oliver Blower, chief executive of VoxSmart, which provides employee-surveillance software, says using personal phones may be appropriate in some sectors. But in a job such as trading, where “anything related to or intended to result in a transaction has to be recorded”, allowing employees to do this on anything other than a corporate-issued device is “penny-wise, pound-foolish”.

Companies trying to save money with “bring your own device” policies risk falling foul of regulators, he says. “They’re trying to save a few bucks on phone tariffs but they’re getting whacked with $100mn fines. We’ve seen them all swing to BYOD then come back to corporate-issued.”

Staff in these sectors also have to tread carefully. Some banks now train employees to recognise when conversations on personal phones should be moved to official channels. Others require them to take screenshots of work-related messages on their personal devices to share with compliance departments.

Blower, a former trader, says: “Everyone wants to use WhatsApp in trading because we use WhatsApp in our personal lives.” His advice to employees is blunt: “If you’re not given the tools to do your job, resign.”

Outside highly regulated professions, D’Souza sees the debate of work phone versus BYOD as more “a cultural . . . than a technology issue”.

He says organisations should be aware of staff working hours, although he is sceptical about an official “right to disconnect”. He points to a CIPD survey that found only a fifth of UK workers would actually use such a policy to halt all digital contact outside working hours. 

For some, however, it is not an issue at all. “It’s been about a year since I last switched my work phone on,” says one investment bank analyst.

What if there were a work emergency? “I have my personal number on my email. They could call me on that,” they reply. “But why would I keep my work phone on? It’s not like I’m going to spend my Saturdays checking Teams.”