BYOD: The End of Silly IT Contracts?

Wasting money and resources on unrealistic techniques has always been a problem in technology companies. As Robert L. Glass pointed out in his book "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering", people have mistakenly put their faith in smarter editors, extreme programming, agile development, CASE tools, object-oriented programming, Service Oriented Architecture, etc. ... none of which have proven to be a radical magic bullet for software development.

Software business owners have wasted time and resources on a similar problem: the employee agreement. What was once a sheet or two of paper has grown into small novels of legalism containing Non-Disclosure Agreements, Non-Compete Agreements, use of personal electronics and corporate Internet, criminal checks. In some cases, employees are even forced to undertake credit checks, even though there is no correlation between poor credit and crime.

When I spoke with an Human Resources lady last week, she explained these kind of provisions are necessary because "companies have to protect themselves" from their own employees, much like King Kong demanding protection from Fay Wray.

Elaborate, legalistic employee agreements simply don't work. Canadian courts are traditionally hostile towards companies that sue their own people. So called "iron clad" contracts never hold up in court: the company must justify what such a contract is necessary, and they never can. These agreements often violate an employee's legal rights, such as the right to make copies of materials addressed to them. Trials are also very costly, and the minor financial damages claimed by companies seldom justify an expensive trip to court. To the best of my research, no company has ever successfully sued an employee under these type of agreements.

There are other costs as well:

• Wasted money spend on legal fees for something that doesn't work. Additional licenses must be purchased for software that an employee may already own on their own devices.
• Wasted technology for supplying extra phones, laptops or other devices to employees to separate personal items from corporate items
• Wasted time as employees have to do additional work without benefit to the company, such as copying files around
• Legal conflicts because business and personal life cannot be cleanly separated. For example, having to work from home on a non-corporate computer because of a business emergency.
• Loss of morale as these deals are one-sided. Employees are deemed untrustworthy while management in North American companies has a lengthy history of fraud and corruption

Recently, companies have been going to extremes, adding "still legal even if this is illegal" type clauses in contracts. This, effectively, says the company believes itself above the law and is telling the judge what to decide, which practically guarantees the employee agreement will be thrown out if it ever gets to court.

However, some companies have been shying away from such wasteful agreements. Here's a couple of examples.

Two-way Agreements. In this type of agreement, the management of the company makes similar promises to the employee that they expect the employee to make to the company. The management agrees not to not disclose information indicated as confidential by the employee. The management agrees not to compete against the employee if the employee should leave. By creating two-way agreements, the company hopes to restore trust between management and employees and instill a sense of teamwork.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). This is even more interesting. These agreements discard the artificial barrier between personal and corporate. Employees are expected to bring their own electronics, such as cell phones and laptops, with whatever software, personal notes, web services they are comfortable with to do their job.

This kind of agile agreement is driven, not so much by a desire to save money, as to avoid looking foolish before clients. When a phone rings, and the employee fumbles to find whether its the business phone or his personal phone, or when the employee must run two laptops, one for business and one for personal, it presents a poor corporate image to the company's clients. Bringing one laptop and one phone looks more professional.

The BYOD approach brings a number of other advantages:

• It acknowledgs that legalistic agreements don't protect the company
• Less wasted money on licenses and legal fees
• Less wasted electronics
• Builds trust and provides a sense of teamwork and cooperation
• Allows IT workers not to have to waste time and money duplicating work
• Promotes proper wages for IT workers so they can keep their equipment in good condition

As to the HR woman I was speaking with, she went on to say how restrictive "real" companies like financial institutions were. One of the best employee agreements I ever saw was working for Mackenzie Financial Corporation, a multi-billion dollar Canadian mutual fund company, that had a short agreement with a small list of requirements, strictly spelled out with time and money limits, completely unlike the agreements many employees are forced to sign today. At the iTech Toronto 2011 Summit, Michael O'Neil, CEO of "IT in Canada", forecasted a growth in BYOD as a way of doing business. I hope he was right. It was time to get real and work together to produce cool products. Let's stop giving money to lawyers and start to make lots of money.

April 10, 2011