Dropping your phone is the worst. But dropping all the devices your organization has to manage? That has some advantages.

According to Gartner's prediction, half of employers will require their employees to provide their own devices for work by 2017. This shift is internally called "BYOD," or Bring Your Own Device. And here's what you need to know.

What is BYOD? And Should You Try It?

With a BYOD policy in place, your company could experience both benefits and drawbacks. To decide if it's right for you, you'll need to assess both sides of the coin under the lens of your organization's current mobility status and budget.

Your first consideration should be whether or not you have a highly mobile workforce who might benefit from the mobility a BYOD policy allows. If you do, and you have a limited hardware budget, BYOD is a smart consideration.

One huge benefit, of course, is cost reduction. Aside from that, BYOD can mean increased productivity; employees can take work with them to perform after hours or away from the office, and if you choose the right communications solution to accompany your new policy, your employees will all have access to the same working environment regardless of device type or manufacturer.

Further, a BYOD policy can promote employee satisfaction, via increased flexibility. It's a nice perk to be able to access your own mobile device at work.

So, if you don't have the time or budget to manage a bunch of hardware, BYOD might make sense. But to really understand if it's right for your company, you also need to think about the drawbacks — some of which are the same as the benefits!

Imagine you have employees who need to maintain a certain level of focus or productivity during the day. You don't want those employees distracted by their personal devices; in this way, BYOD has the potential to decrease productivity. It happens even to the most focused employees. Consider the requirement for attention and focus on a continuous basis.

Also consider the level of risk for your company's network security, and whether or not implementing such a policy would require you to spend significant time making security updates. Allowing employees to bring their own devices limits the options your organization has for instituting good practices for the device. With an unpredictable set of features and functionality, it's hard to know what kind of additional risks it will bring. So instituting BYOD creates some added cost, in that you'll need to spend time creating relevant policies and rolling them out to your employees, and then following up, monitoring and acting on those policies. After all, a good policy is only as useful as its enforcement.

But finding the balance between enforcement and limitation can be a challenge, as well. It can be difficult to determine what level of control your company has or should have over the device.

If you desire rigid control, employees are far less encouraged to participate. Yet loose rules mean you might introduce security risks and options for lost productivity.

You'll need to add work cycles in order to develop the policy, including understanding the reimbursement platform, the limitations for security and the potential impact on productivity, and also to institute the policy enterprise-wide.

Making the Call

As you can see, there is a lot to consider when you assess whether or not BYOD is right for your company. Though a significant percentage of employers are headed toward BYOD (or are already there), your company might need to do a risk benefit analysis to determine if it's the correct choice today. If the answer is yes, start with a serious planning session to ensure you create an effective policy with an effective strategy for rollout.

Considering a BYOD policy or implemented one in the past year? You need to ensure your network and organizational data remains secure.