what did they do with employees that didn’t have their own device? Fire them if they didn’t get one?
Nothing. The program was targeted towards employees who had bank owned and bank funded Blackberry devices.
The people who typically had/have blackberry devices in our bank are Senior Management, those who travel alot (and need both voice and email internationally) and critical operational support personnel. As silly as it seems, having a bank owned and funded Blackberry was considered a "privilege" and a "sign" that one was "invaluable" to the bank. That was then.