| Earlier this year, the CSC Leading Edge Forum - Executive Programme surveyed more than 400 senior executives from large businesses in Europe, North America, and Scandinavia on a range of IT issues. One of the questions aimed directly at Douglas Neal’s point about the top-down, one-size-fits-all way that IT departments deal with employees.
Q: In general, which of the following would you say best describes your organization’s primary approach to how its employees access your company’s key IT systems and applications?
Most companies allow employees to access their systems from anywhere in the world, but only by using specific company-issued devices. Almost one-third of firms allow access from any browser-enabled device, while a small minority permit the use of IT systems only from within the office.
This is important data because it implies that two-thirds of the companies in the market restrict access to their systems to a significant degree. Clearly, most employees would like to access company systems from any Internet-connected devices, but for reasons of cost, control and security, corporate IT has usually decided not to allow this. But as employees increasingly want to work from home, on the road or from places such as Starbucks, this will remain an important issue, and is one that we are examining at length in our research into the consumerization of IT.
While there was not a great deal of variation by industry, a more detailed analysis [see tables below] showed that organizations that rely heavily on outsourcing tend to implement more restrictive policies, suggesting that cost and control issues typically outweigh employee preferences in those environments.
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