Gadget Row

Not so long ago, taking your own laptop into work would have been frowned upon by suspicious managers more trusting of the decrepit 20-year-old PCs than of your shiny new gadget, but these days, times have changed, and one piece of research has actually revealed that taking your own gadgets into the workplace can directly lead to a massive increase in productivity.

A YouGov survey found that businesses which allowed, and even encouraged, employees to bring in their own technology benefited from productivity increases of up to 30%. The research also found that more and more firms are starting to hand their staff members technology budgets, designed to fund the purchasing of new computer equipment that employees can use both at home and at work.

However, even though these figures are difficult to argue with, while the increase in the use of “the cloud” in businesses up and down the country means that it isn’t really an issue using a non-work owned computer to carry out daily functions, some managers clearly remain suspicious about the practice.

The survey found that a number of businesses are anxious about allowing external devices that are difficult to identify and track to access their internal networks, while businesses that try not to encourage home working (perhaps due to the potential distractions away from the office of online videos featuring comedians like Reeves and Mortimer), despite that being an increasing trend, clearly don’t want to reduce reliance upon work computers.

The fact remains, though, that as technological improvements come into our lives faster than ever before, even the most established and old-fashioned of businesses will need to adapt to the modern ways of making the most of technology, or else risk being left behind for good in a competitive and fast-moving world.