Employees Turn To Corporate IT Dept For Personal Devices

Nearly half of respondents to a recent Unisys Corporation online poll indicated they are more likely to ask their company IT department to fix problems with the personally owned consumer devices they use at work than they are to troubleshoot the issues themselves or seek support from the device manufacturer.

The 556 information workers (iWorkers) responding to the August 2011 poll were answering the question, “Who do you turn to for support when something goes wrong with your personal device that you use for work?”

47 percent of the respondents answered that they contact the company IT department for support, while 11 percent responded that they turn to the primary technology provider. 33 percent of the respondents indicated that they troubleshoot the problem themselves first.

“Consumerisation of IT could steamroll IT organisations if they can’t find creative ways to support iWorkers’ growing use of personally owned technology for business purposes,” said Larry Dunn, Vice President, Global IT Outsourcing Solutions, Unisys. “It’s critical that IT leaders thoroughly reassess their processes for supporting and managing increasingly mobile end users and exploit new channels, such as self-service, to help employees quickly resolve problems with personal technology. By being proactive, CIOs can turn a potential challenge into a potentially huge productivity enhancer,” said Dunn.

This finding corroborates recent results of the second annual Unisys consumerisation of IT research, conducted in May 2011 by International Data Corp (IDC). IT executives responding to that global survey said that employees encountering a problem with a personal device used for business will contact the IT department for help nearly 60 percent of the time rather than try to resolve the problem themselves or contact the technology provider.