Curious if you offering any kind of reimbursement/stipend for cell phone (equipment & data), for staff that would heavily utilize the device for Marketing purposes (think along the lines of a staff member whose role/job it would be to post media on the socials). Do you provide phones/data for some staff, all staff, none?
Hey Neil,
We don’t issue any phones devices nor do we reimburse/subsidize phone plans for staff members. We all pretty much use our out devices for communication. The only exception is for our Communication Team, they have one dedicated iPhone with data/text/internet that’s paid by the church.
This was very different for me, as my background is corporate/government, in how phone device, data, and voice had to be provided by BYOD. I’m used to be being told that I had to carry a phone provided by the organization wherever I used to work at.
I am in a different situation as I administer over 200 cell devices (phones, modems, cradle point routers, etc.) for a group of 42 Christian radio stations. For individuals we allow a new phone every 2 years and pay for the data which is on a corporate shared data plan. We are going to limit the dollar amount we will pay, and users will be allowed a $550 every year to be accrued for their use every 2 years so the max we will allow per phone is $1100. The phones remain the property of the company and not the individual. However, when a person leaves, they do have the option to purchase the phone at the current value and port the number to a private account.
We have a monthly stipend for some employees, just pastors (not sure if pastors get something different) and those in a management position who have to be available outside of the office. It’s pretty comparable to what an unlimited plan would cost a month with a major carrier.
We only do this for called and ordained pastors. Frankly, I see this as an artifact of a time gone by. This made sense in the day when cell phone or smartphones were rare. To my knowledge this practice hasn’t been reviewed for some time.
The rest of the staff is like Steve described. We are expected to use our own smartphone. We have a VoIP phone system and most of the staff don’t even have a desk phone. We just run an app on our smartphones.
We provide a stipend (around $50 per month) for all employees that are expected to answer their phones outside of business hours.