Remote Employee Returning Equipment: Retrieving Tech Quickly and Efficiently

A critical part of running a remote workforce is getting equipment into your employees' hands as well as retrieving it. And for many organizations, the company equipment return process is the most challenging aspect of the remote work arrangement. 

Here’s a step-by-step overview of how to retrieve remote employee devices with minimal hassle. 

Steps for Retrieving Company-Owned Equipment

1. Have a Remote Employee Equipment Agreement or Policy in Place

Before sending your first piece of company property to anyone on your remote team, you should have some form of official remote retrieval documentation in your employee handbook. 

This should 1) ensure you’re on the same page with an employee regarding office equipment and 2) protect you in case any issues arise later on with a team member when returning equipment. 

The simplest way to do this is to create a remote worker equipment agreement or policy for company owned equipment. This involves four key steps. 

First, identify which specific types of equipment constitute company property. For example, any laptop, tablet, or smartphone you send a remote worker to perform daily tasks may be defined as company assets. 

Next, explain what a remote employee’s responsibilities are when it comes to caring for and maintaining company equipment. 

Third, outline the process for returning remote working equipment once an employee has been terminated. 

For instance, you may mention that you’ll send a box with a prepaid shipping label and that a departing employee has seven days to send it back before it’s considered missing equipment. 

Finally, highlight the consequences for not properly following the equipment return process. 

According to our survey, this is how modern companies approach dealing with employees who refuse to return equipment. 

• 33% use an MDM to remotely lock a device
• 29% refer the issue to their legal department
• 21% withhold payroll delivery (more on this in a second)
• 15% write it off as a loss 

Note that while withholding pay may seem tempting, as you can deduct the cost of unreturned equipment from an employee’s final paycheck to serve as reimbursement, it is illegal in many US states. 

Therefore, you’ll want to research the legalities in your specific area before making this move. 

2. Start the Offboarding Process

Once your human resource team has officially signaled that someone is a terminated employee, it’s time to initiate offboarding. To make this as smooth as possible, an employer should have a consistent workflow that can be iterated as data and feedback are gathered over time. 

This starts by sending the employee a box with a prepaid shipping label. Included in the box should be detailed return instructions, packing materials, and contact information if they have any questions. 

Besides that, it’s smart to get insurance coverage, which covers you in the event of damage or loss when an employee returns equipment. This isn’t required, but it can provide valuable peace of mind and spare you from future friction. 

It should also clearly state how long a worker has to return the box, which should match the timeline in your remote employee equipment agreement/policy. 

Once your IT team receives the returned company property, they should record it in a log for quick reference, a process that can be streamlined with an ITSM tool like Freshservice Instance.

If there are any issues during the equipment return process, like damaged or lost devices, this should be immediately communicated to the appropriate departments.

Also, it’s smart to perform an exit interview so you can get timely, objective feedback, so you can pinpoint ways to improve future offboarding. 

For a more exhaustive deep dive on equipment recovery and other core areas of ITAM, check out our IT Asset Management Best Practices Survey.

3. Inspect Equipment

After remote worker equipment has been returned, an employer will want to perform an inspection to determine its current state. 

Typically, the best way to handle this process is to start with a visual inspection where you look for obvious issues like cracks, dents, and missing keyboard keys. 

Next, check all device accessories, such as cables and chargers, to ensure everything is included and there are no issues like fraying. 

Then, manually turn each device on to check for basic functionality.

At that point, you should decide what to do next with each piece of equipment. Your choice should fall under one of three categories:

• Redeploy
• Repair
• Discard

Just note that whenever a device is redeployed to a new employee, you’ll want to perform a data wipe and take other security measures to ensure there’s no lingering information that other members of your remote workforce may find. 

For instance, personal documents, login information, or contact information could be problematic, so you’ll want to be sure that a device is fully sanitized. 

4. Store Devices Back in Inventory

For the company equipment that will be reused, you’ll want to put it back into your inventory catalog where it can be stored for future use. 

This is important because a well-organized inventory will help you keep track of the exact assets you have and ensure that necessary equipment is available when it needs to be redeployed to a new employee. 

Here are a few tips to make this phase go smoothly. 

First, be sure to categorize each piece of returned equipment (e.g., company laptop, tablet, smartphone, wearable, and so on) so you can quickly locate it later on. 

Next, note the condition (e.g., good, fair, or poor).

Third, note the date that information technology equipment was returned to your inventory pool.

Finally, be sure to thoroughly sanitize each piece of equipment. As we mentioned earlier, this includes digital sanitization, like performing a data wipe to prevent unauthorized access by remote teams. 

This also includes physically cleaning the equipment to remove germs so that it’s sanitary when redeployed. For guidance on how to properly disinfect IT assets, check out this article from PCMag. 

Once all of these boxes have been checked, let an HR professional know so they can assign previously used devices to other employees. 

3 Options for a Remote Employee Returning Equipment

1. Develop an In-House Solution

If you want maximum control with employee offboarding and have the time and resources to handle remote employee equipment return, this is likely your best option. 

Here, you’ll be responsible for sending out return shipping materials like a box, packing materials, and return instructions. 

You’ll also need to have dedicated IT members to maintain clear communication, as well as equipment inspection, data wiping, device cleaning, and inventory categorization. 

If you’re wondering which team members are involved in the remote worker equipment return process, here’s how the numbers break down.

For 84% of companies, IT personnel are responsible for retrieving equipment. For 39% of organizations, it’s HR personnel. And for 53% of companies, it’s a direct supervisor. 

Note that these results came from a multi-selection question, which means respondents include everyone involved in the equipment return process. 

An in-house solution can work well if you have adequate IT staffing and comes with potential cost savings. 

That said, the logistics of handling equipment return from a remote workforce, especially at scale, can be much more challenging than if you primarily focus on local office equipment pickup.

Before choosing an in-house solution, you should be confident that you have the internal resources available to comfortably handle equipment management. 

In terms of the amount of time spent on ITAM, here’s how that breaks down.

• 37% of companies spend over 21 hours per week
• 25% spend 11 - 20 hours per week
• 27% spend 6 - 10 hours per week
• 10% spend 2 - 5 hours per week
• 1% spend 0 - 1 hours per week

Note that this survey applies to all ITAM tasks as a whole and not just employee equipment return. But it does show that these tasks can be quite time-consuming for many companies and can present compliance challenges. 

That’s why many choose to partner with a third-party professional, which brings us to our next option.  

2. Use a Third-Party Service

If you either A) don’t have the manpower to deal with equipment return or B) simply don’t want to deal with the logistics hassle, partnering with a third-party service can be a great option. 

With allwhere, for example, you can get fast and reliable laptop returns, where the end-to-end process is taken care of for you during laptop retrieval. Here’s how it works. 

We send a box, a laptop return label, packing materials, and instructions to an employee. They then pack up their laptop and accessories and ship them out. 

All the while, we monitor return status and handle communication, letting you know when the return kit is sent, delivered, and received, as well as any issues that may happen along the way. 

If necessary, we send employees automated reminders so they don’t forget when their current tools are due. 

We also provide your team with real-time tracking and updates, and let you know about any communication that occurs between us and your employee. 

In terms of the timing of our laptop return service, the average retrieval time for US-based businesses is less than a week. 

However, rush courier service is available with robust tracking.

If you need it faster, we can provide a custom quote and go in more depth about long distance courier options, next day delivery from regional warehouses, and provide a sample delivery timeline for your service area. 

Additionally, we can handle equipment storage once it’s been returned and can quickly redeploy an IT asset from one of the facilities in our global network.  

3. Let Employees Keep the Device

The other option is to simply let workers hold onto the device and not return it. 

While this remote work policy isn’t a good option for high-value equipment that you want to redeploy, it can work when you’re dealing with lower-value equipment or assets that you don’t plan on redeploying. 

This eliminates shipping costs and logistics issues, can be a show of goodwill for reliable, long-term employees, and should promote increased employee engagement. 

Just note that unreturned property will likely result in a financial loss, and you may need to account for it on your taxes. 

Streamline Your IT Equipment Needs with allwhere

With so many of today’s workers operating remotely or doing hybrid work, an employer must have an efficient, streamlined system for retrieving IT equipment. 

And the fact of the matter is that, for many companies, this presents a lot of issues. 

According to our survey, ITAM challenges are ranked in this order.

1. Asset tracking and inventory accuracy
2. Equipment recovery and offboarding
3. Security, compliance, and privacy
4. Vendor selection and procurement

While not as problematic as asset tracking and inventory accuracy, equipment recovery is definitely one of the more major challenges that modern organizations contend with.

Because of this, often the best choice is to partner with a professional who knows the ins and outs and can handle the process for you from start to finish. 

When it comes to fast and simple laptop returns, allwhere is an excellent choice. 

Whether you need a one-time retrieval kit or run a large organization and need bulk retrievals, we’ve got you covered. 

Our team is fast, effective, and can reliably handle equipment retrievals throughout the US and all over the world, while ensuring the highest possible level of security for your company data and compliance. 

Our average retrieval time for US-based workers is under a week. However, if you need it faster, we’ll be happy to provide you with a custom quote. 

And if you don’t have an on-site IT team and need storage, we’ve got you covered there as well. 

You can find a full overview of our retrieval solutions and get started here.