Most BYOD policies I’ve seen (10 years in info sec and 6 as a consultant) allow you to bring your own personal device but as soon as you do it basically becomes company property. The physics hardware is yours but any information on it is owned by the company and the company can take physical possession of it temporarily if they need to do a forensic investigation.

Likewise most WiFi policies I’ve seen say personal devices are forbidden from the corporate network and have to run on the guest network, which is usually not monitored as heavily.

Please read your employee handbook, (IANAL but based on what I’ve experienced) legally companies have to disclose this. Unfortunately many people do not read the e-handbook and are upset when the learn the rules they’ve unwittingly agreed to follow.

BYOD or personal devices, just always imagine that if it’s using any corporate resources, the company will claim ownership if there is any dispute. And depending on your e-handbook, they’re likely to win a legal battle because likely you signed an agreement saying they can.

My company's BYOD policy is that you have to load the company's management software onto your personal hardware, and then if you leave the company, they wipe the device remotely, including all of your personal data.

I think it's draconian, but plenty of people signed up for the program. I prefer to keep my home and work gear isolated from one another. I don't even have them on the same ISP.

Yeah, that sounds pretty bad and precisely the kind of thing I don't like at all. The carte blanche that companies have over anything that has been anywhere near anything of theirs is really annoying and not really practical for most people, and kind of stupid of you stop to think about it. Why can't we have company data in a thing where you can wipe just that? If I come to work and bring a personal device, they can supposedly search it. But what am I really supposed to do, leave my phone and watch at home and drop off the face of the earth during that time period? I understand that corporate security is a thing and all but some of this is just something that needs to actually consider practicality :/

They’re not searching your watch or phone unless you’ve connected them to the corporate WiFi and/or accessed corporate information using those devices. The devices they care about are ones used to access internal data.

So no, don’t leave your phone and watch at home. Just don’t connect them to Wifi at work or your work email/calendar. Make your company provide you a corporate phone if they want you to answer email on your phone.