What mobile phone does your employer provide?

[bitchstewie]

A quick basic poll around what they offer and what you'd prefer.

I'd be appreciative of any opinions and if it could stay here vs. being moved to the Computer forum as I would like people who don't just have an interest in technology to see it please.

Prefer if it didn't turn into iOS vs. Android, just want to get an idea if there's any obvious trend on both what employers are doing and what employees want

[bitchstewie]

Fastdruid said:

Needs to allow more options to be selected at once.

They gave me an android phone *but* there is the choice of Android, Windows, iphone or an allowance to use your own phone. Which model phone depends on your position in the company, ie at the lowest level you wouldn't get the option of an iphone. They do however give the option to "top up" to a higher grade phone. So in theory the lowest person who would get a phone *could* get an iphone but they'd need to pay quite a chunk extra.

Fixed, could have sworn I made it multi-choice but apparently not

[bitchstewie]

Truckosaurus said:

We have the choice of an iPhone SE or some sort of Motorola Android phone for free, or can get a discounted price on a number of other phones if you want to upgrade with your own money.

Presume they give you a plan where personal calls are included?

Can't see why anyone would contribute their own money to a "work" phone otherwise?

[bitchstewie]

jkh112 said:

You only seem interested in smart phones.

For this yes, though if someone just needs a ten quid Nokia they'll get a ten quid Nokia.

[bitchstewie]

Truckosaurus said:

Personal calls are changed to you via your payslip.

How does that work out in practise?

I'd be concerned the company spends more working out that you own them £2/month (or whatever) than is worth recovering.

[bitchstewie]

I see this has been moved.

I'd have loved opinions from anyone/everyone who comes here, so The Lounge seemed a good place to achieve that.

As it is I guess someone has spotted the word "employer" so off it goes to the "Jobs" forum, because everyone on PistonHeads goes there, right?

Any chance it could be moved back please?

[bitchstewie]

MrOrange said:

As an employer, I can offer an alternate viewpoint. This question feels like a very last-century view/issue.

We offer a choice:

• Use your own phone, for which we will pay any reasonable expenses. This also allows you work anywhere, flex-time and all the perks of working in the 21st century.
• Nothing. Whatsoever.

What else might you expect your employer to provide? Perhaps tissues, or shoe leather, a watch, ink for your pen? It's almost 2017 FFS!

How do your staff switch off?

[bitchstewie]

shep1001 said:

Windows phone. We were going down the Apple route at one point for the new phone/tablet/laptop we got issued on the latest wave of IT kit replacements but it was decided the security was not sufficient on the Apple devices to meet company standards

That's quite interesting as arguably iOS is the most secure of the three main platforms (now Blackberry has pretty much all but gone).

[bitchstewie]

brickwall said:

iPhone 6. They will cover reasonable personal usage, even if that means in some cases high costs (i.e. it's reasonable to call home when you're abroad, and as we've sent you there)

Do you ever get queried on your bill at line item level or you just mean so long as the chunk of personal cost isn't over a threshold?

[bitchstewie]

MrOrange said:

• Afternoon naps
• break during the day
• switch off notifications
• officially "go dark"
• switch off devices/phones

Lots of ways to go dark. In fairness our business is planned and proactive, reactive stuff is "pooled" and whoever who wants it picks it up. Also, we use apps to manage comms rather than plain old telephone calls to communicate to avoid disruption so maybe we're not a good working example for the OP

Thanks, makes sense, I was thinking more how companies that do this deal with customers phoning staff on their day off or when they're on holiday where it's a single number shared between work and personal.

[bitchstewie]

TheAngryDog said:

Work issued me an iPhone 5S. Not allowed to really use the data on it for any purpose (including work), we are expected to use our own phones data allowance if needed, no personal calls.

I'm curious, if you can't use data on it why do they give you a smartphone?

[bitchstewie]

K50 DEL said:

not one person here (out of 100 users) has anything good to say about Windows mobile devices lol

I find similar and I did find the poll results very surprising in two ways - the total contrast in the percentage of people with Windows phones (much more than I expected) vs. the number of people, or rather the 1 person out of almost 200, who wants a Windows phone.