Personal Technology at Work

Earlier this month, federal CIO Vivek Kundra spoke about a future where federal employees could forgo a work phone and laptop and do all of their work using their personal technology. Now, a new survey by Unisys and IDC finds that 95 percent of IT workers already use their own personal technology for work.

The survey of 2,820 IT workers and 610 employers from around the world found that while IT workers are using personal technology for work, there is a disconnect with their employers on what levels of use are permissible, if at all. For example, IT workers in the survey reported that they are using personal smartphones, laptops and mobile phones in the workplace at nearly twice the rate reported by employers.

In addition, IT workers report using an average of four consumer devices and other tools, such as social networking websites, in the course of their work day. Sixty-nine percent of IT workers say they can access non-work related websites, while only 44 percent of employers reported this to be the case, the study found.

And although 95 percent of employees use personal tech to perform work, 70 percent of employers want to buy standardized technologies for them. Unlike Kundra's vision for the federal government, 57 percent of employers said they were unlikely to start a stipend program to pay for employee tech purchases within the next two years.

According to Unisys, the results of the survey indicate a gap between the expectations and activities of IT workers and their employers' readiness to manage, secure and support this new movement - and capitalize on it. Employers must modernize their IT environments to ensure they can handle increased security needs, bulkier workloads and attract a new generation of workers to their organizations, the report states.

The report also suggests that the consumer-powered IT trend is creating a fourth wave of workforce productivity that is being driven from the bottom up, rather than the top-down processes of the past. "It's being driven by the power of millions - even billions - of networked people around the world who are using technology to bring new ideas and unleash the powerful innovation to those organizations that are ready and willing to take advantage," the report states.