How BYOD Can Boost Your Green Campaign

Two of the latest trends in business culture are environmentally friendly green campaigns and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) work environments. There are a few ways that a BYOD system can contribute to the success of your company's green campaign, as they both seek to use technology to increase everyday efficiency at the office.

BYOD is an office trend that encourages the use of employees' personally owned mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) for regular everyday business operations. There's a good chance that your office may even have integrated BYOD into its routine already. Forrester conducted a study concluding that at least 53% of office employees are using their personal devices for work. There are many benefits of an integrated BYOD work environment including increased employee satisfaction and productivity, and reduced overall technology expenses. Take a look at our previous blog posts about BYOD to learn more. Now, let's look at how BYOD can aid your company's green campaign by reducing, reusing, and recycling.

Reduce
The basic concept behind BYOD allows companies to reduce their technology and power usage. By allowing your employees to bring their own devices, you can reduce the amount of technology tools floating around the office.

BYOD environments carry the possibility of providing offices without workstations. PCs are currently the most practical computing options in the office, but there is certainly reason to believe that mobile devices could take over that position. More than ever before, technology is being produced that competes with and can even surpass the potential productivity of the average office computer. As even greater options are produced and bought for personal use in the future, your office can seize the opportunity to reduce its technology use in a few different ways.

• BYOD reduces power usage: Mobile devices require fractional amounts of energy to operate compared to the average PC, and are able to charge quickly for day-long, power-free use.
• BYOD reduces PC dependency: Employees who bring their own devices into work will not necessarily need PCs to perform their tasks.
• BYOD reduces hardware cost: BYOD eliminates the need to provide company cell phones to employees, as they obviously carry their own.
• BYOD helps reduce the amount of resources used to produce new PCs: The average PC uses 1.8 tons of raw material (about the same amount needed to produce a mid-size vehicle), and an average 240 kg of fossil fuels (about 80% of the energy it uses in its lifespan). Mobile technology requires significantly fewer resources for production.
• BYOD reduces print costs: Your company files can be stored online via a cloud solution and be accessed by all employees away from the restrictions of a stationary workstation to reduce the need for printing.

Reuse
By integrating a BYOD work environment, you'll enable a "reuse" mentality that will aid your green campaign. All mobile devices are serviced with periodic software upgrades that aid their longevity of use. If your devices are properly maintained, they could last for the same amount of time that the average office PC lasts. Many times, some of your office employees jump at the opportunity to upgrade to the newest mobile device technology, and will offer their previous device to be reused by a colleague at a slashed discount. Implementing a BYOD policy will encourage your employees to reuse technology until it's obsolete.

Recycle
Implementing a BYOD work environment is a great way to guide your employees' personal recycling habits, and in turn, boost your company's recycling initiatives. Since your employees will be using their own personal devices, you won't be able to proceduralize what they do with them when they're done using them, but you could use your position of leadership to influence a mobile recycling initiative. You could even create a reward structure to give incentive for your employees to recycle their devices.

The bottom line is that recycling mobile devices is extremely important, and will contribute a lot more to your green campaign than the alternative. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, for every million cell phones recycled, 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium can be recovered. While you can't force your employees to recycle their personal devices, you can create incentive and make it as easy as possible for them.

Boost your company's green campaign by integrating a BYOD office at your company. It's a great way to practically reduce, reuse, and recycle. Before you dive in, you'll need to strategize a BYOD guideline policy that allows for some moderation of safe practices on your network. Preferred can help you draft a policy, and even help you fully implement your BYOD workplace. Just give us a call at 708-781-7110, and we'll work with you to achieve your green goals with our technology solutions!