Are Your Employees Using Company Mobiles for the Wrong Things?

You hand a member of staff a company mobile. By the end of the month, three gigabytes of the data allowance have gone. Calls to clients? Emails? Work apps? Possibly. But also quite possibly Netflix on the commute, TikTok during lunch, and a bit of online shopping on the side.

This is not hypothetical. It happens in businesses of all sizes, and for many employers it is an uncomfortable topic. But it has a real cost, both financial and in terms of productivity, and it is something that modern mobile management tools make surprisingly easy to address.

The Financial Side

Company mobile data is not free. Whether you are on a fixed allowance or paying for overages, heavy personal usage by employees adds up. Streaming video in particular is a significant data drain. A single hour of HD streaming can consume several gigabytes. Multiply that across a team and across a month, and it becomes a meaningful line on the bill.

Beyond data costs, there is the productivity question. Time spent on social media or entertainment during working hours is time not spent on the job. Most employers understand that complete restriction is neither practical nor sensible, but having no policy at all is equally untenable.

How Productivity Controls Work in my.plan

my.plan, the mobile management platform Netix Digital delivers as an authorised plan.com partner, includes category-level controls that operate at the network level. That means you do not need to install anything on the device itself. The restrictions apply before traffic even reaches the phone.

You can block entire categories: gambling sites, streaming services, social media platforms, adult content. You can also cap streaming speeds rather than blocking outright, which limits data consumption without a complete ban. The controls are applied through the portal and take effect quickly across all devices in the relevant group.

This Is Not About Surveillance

It is worth being clear about what this is and is not. Productivity controls are about setting boundaries on company-owned devices, not monitoring individuals. There is no keystroke logging, no message reading, no location tracking of personal movements.

The appropriate framing is an acceptable use policy. Most businesses already have one in writing. my.plan gives you a way to enforce it technically, consistently, and without having difficult conversations every time someone pushes the boundaries.

The controls are also easy to adjust. If you want to relax restrictions at the weekend, or allow social media access for a marketing team that genuinely needs it, that is a quick change in the portal.

BYOD vs Company Devices

These controls apply to company-owned SIMs and devices, not to personal phones. If your business operates a bring-your-own-device policy, the situation is different and more nuanced. But for any device on your company mobile plan, you have a clear right to set usage parameters, and my.plan makes doing so straightforward.

If you are running a mixed estate where some staff have company devices and others use personal phones for work, that is worth reviewing as a separate conversation. The two scenarios need different approaches.

Apply Rules by Group

Not every role has the same needs. A field engineer may need unrestricted access to mapping apps and job management tools but has little business need for streaming services during site visits. An office-based administrator might reasonably have access to certain platforms that a warehouse operative does not.

my.plan lets you apply controls by group, so the rules for your field team can be different from the rules for head office staff. This makes the system flexible enough to reflect how your business actually works, rather than applying a single blunt policy across everyone.

Easy to Set Up, Easy to Adjust

Setting up productivity controls does not require a technical background. The portal is designed for business managers, not IT specialists. Categories are listed clearly, toggles are straightforward, and changes propagate quickly across the affected devices.

If your current approach to company mobile usage is to hope for the best and deal with it when the bill arrives, it is worth considering what a few sensible controls would actually look like in practice. You might be surprised how simple it is.