In response to a number of issues in the workforce and the advances of technology, the UK has been quickly moving towards a culture of remote working and supporting agile workers.
One way to assist the agile working movement is giving employees work phones, laptops and tablets to ensure that they are accessible and never disconnected from the business. Yet so many employees do not take advantage of the multiple ways to connect including home Wi-Fi and personal hotspot devices. Instead they choose to burn through data funded by their business.
Because of this, Majesti-Fi, the pocket WiFi provider for business and enterprises commissioned research with YouGov to find out what working women have been getting up to on their business devices.
Most devices these days are used to check social media and perhaps surprisingly men are the worst culprits – nearly a third of male workers versus under a quarter of female workers use work data to access social media sites.
Majesti-Fi found that one of the top uses for a business device was the browsing of dating apps. Shockingly the research reveals that over 4% of women were actually looking at dating apps.
Of the 15 million female workers – 21% do not think twice about using their devices to shop for the latest fashion trends and rinsing the company data in the process.
Most people would think it strange to communicate by text these days when there are so many messaging apps available. In fact, almost one in five female workers enjoy chatting to their friends on WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger using business devices.
COO of Majesti-Fi Mark Baxter says: "The type of content people can access on a work device is up to each employer to stipulate. The issue here is that when people start thinking about personal things such as shopping, social media and dating, they become complacent and careless with how they get online. They will often jump onto freely available public or free Wi-Fi, and this poses a huge risk to their company devices - as the majority of such hotspots are not secure and there is a real risk from breaches, hackers, viruses and malware."
Employers must be more vigilant with staff activity online. Investment in the proper infrastructure to control when, where and how company devices are used is paramount. This will have a significant impact on staff productivity and the bottom line.
For more information visit Majesti-Fi.
Tagged in Women At Work