It’s never been more important to have a solid offboarding process in place. The Great Resignation is far from over: a recent LinkedIn survey shows that over 60% of workers are planning to leave their jobs this year.
When designing your offboarding process, it’s just as important to think about your devices as your departing team members. When the working world was mainly office-based, and laptops generally never left desks, device offboarding was more straightforward. Employees could just hand their devices back to IT on their last day, and IT could handle it from there.
But now that the majority of companies are distributed, and their teams are spread across cities and continents, device offboarding is a much more complicated process.
Firstly, the financial repercussions of getting device offboarding wrong are huge. Devices are expensive assets to lose or damage. A lost work laptop is estimated to cost over US$49K in total.
It’s also important to offboard devices properly to ensure compliance and avoid legal risks. A fifth of organizations say they have experienced data breaches from former employees. Given the average data breach is estimated to cost US$4.35 million, just one breach could financially cripple your company.
Finally, every interaction with your employees - whether incoming, mid-tenure, or outgoing - impacts your brand. If your departing employee’s offboarding experience is dominated by admin or inconvenience, this is what they’re likely to remember and share with others.
When offboarding devices remotely, there are two main considerations:
The closer your team members work to your HQ, the less you need to consider. But when you have teams based across continents, and/or employees in logistically challenging regions, there’s a whole host of things that can go wrong.
Broadly speaking, you have 4 options:
There is no one-size-fits-all approach. To decide the best course of action, you’ll need to consider everything from your hiring plans to the age and condition of the outgoing employee’s device.
However, no scenario is without its challenges. Below, we outline key considerations for each option, from hidden costs to the impact on employee experience.
The first thing you need to consider before sending a used device to a new hire is where the new hire is based. If your new hire is based in the same region as your outgoing employee, you don’t have too much to consider logistically. But Local laws or customs proceedings often create hurdles for sending items across regions.
For example, in some countries, you need the tax ID number of the person receiving the item. This is extra challenging if the new hire has recently arrived in the country and does not have a tax ID number set up yet.
Customs rules differ depending on where you are shipping to and from. And processing times are often longer the more valuable the items. So unless you have a robust process in place, moving devices between different regions could take up hours of your People Team’s time, while adding days or weeks to your new hire’s delivery date.
You also need to consider shipping costs and customs charges, which can increase drastically when shipping to certain locations. For example, to ship items to Brazil, you will have to pay 38% of the value of the item in taxes, and 60% in duties.
So for a laptop worth $1200, you will pay $456 and $720 in duties and taxes respectively. That’s $1176 in total - almost the price of buying the same laptop again. Then add the shipping cost, fuel surcharge, and brokerage fees, and the full cost of the shipment will undoubtedly be more than buying a new laptop.
However, irrespective of where your employees are based, you need to consider how transferring used devices can affect employee experience, for both incoming and outgoing employees.
If your outgoing employee has had their device for a while, it will probably be slow and outdated. While recycling a laptop in this way may be economical for you, it will create a poor onboarding experience for your new hire.
If input is needed from either employee regarding logistical issues (e.g. providing extra information to release an item from customs) this can also make for a time-consuming and sloppy onboarding and offboarding experience.
If your outgoing employee is based in the same country as your HQ, this may be relatively simple. But shipping costs from logistically challenging areas can skyrocket. Depending on how old the device is, the overall cost to ship that device to your HQ could be higher than the value of that laptop.
Perhaps your greatest concern with this option is IT security. Unless you wipe the device of all data before transporting it, you are vulnerable to a data breach. And with this average data breach costing over US$4M, this could financially cripple your organisation. .
While it is lower risk to wipe the device before shipping, it could be a big ask of an employee who is about to move on from the company - especially if their departure is not on their own terms. Even if they are very willing to comply with all formal offboarding processes, how do you know that all data has been securely wiped?
If the first two options are looking too costly, you might consider storing the laptop somewhere local to the outgoing employee, assuming you’ll hire again in that region soon. But there are cost and trust factors you need to account for.
With most storage facilities around the world, pricing changes depending on the size of the unit. So relatively, storing one laptop may not seem like a huge cost. A small storage unit in the Philippines, for example, can start at $30USD per month. But if you do not hire in the region again reasonably soon, the months will roll on, and the fees will add up.
Perhaps more pressing is the issue of security. Taking into account lost intellectual property and breached data, a lost or stolen work laptop is estimated to cost just under $50,000. In a remote location, with none of your own staff nearby to manage the space, leaving expensive equipment in a unit could pose heavy financial risks.
Gifting the device to your outgoing employee may seem like the easiest option from a logistics front. But nevertheless, there are things to consider before going down this route.
The first thing to consider is how old the device is. If the employee’s tenure was less than expected, their laptop may still have its best days in front of it. Are you happy to part with a laptop worth >$1000 for the sake of convenience?
As with all options, you need to factor IT security risk. You would have to be one hundred percent confident that the device has been securely wiped before gifting it to the outgoing employee.
There is also the issue of tax non-compliance risk. If you gift equipment to remote workers, you may need to report it on the employees' payroll, and tax return that a gift of a certain value was given to the employee. Employees may then face income tax and national insurance charges on the value of the equipment.
When offboarding company devices in-house, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The location of your outgoing employee will have a huge impact on the costs and complications involved.
That’s why at Hofy, we provide our customers with flexible device offboarding options, all actionable in a few clicks from our advanced equipment management platform. We take care of all the logistics, to spare your People and IT team 100s of hours.
And with our Mobile Device Management (MDM), you can remotely wipe device data before transporting your devices, to protect your data from falling into the wrong hands.
Avoid heavy shipping costs, navigating customs rules, and tax non-compliance, while creating a smooth offboarding experience for your employees worldwide with Hofy.
To see how smooth and easy it is to offboarding employee devices with Hofy, demo our platform today.
There comes a time when the cost of depreciation outweighs the savings you made by buying in bulk - and it may be much sooner in a device’s lifecycle than you think.
If your support works limited hours, and a team member does not have access to hardware support when they need it, your business can suffer.
Deel explains how to simplify your company's onboarding logistics in a remote, globally dispersed environment with the help of a global HR platform, specialized equipment management software, and HRIS automation.
Productivity, employee experience, and more. Here's how a late laptop can negatively impact your remote onboarding.
.png)
It’s never been more important to have a solid offboarding process in place. The Great Resignation is far from over: a recent LinkedIn survey shows that over 60% of workers are planning to leave their jobs this year.
When designing your offboarding process, it’s just as important to think about your devices as your departing team members. When the working world was mainly office-based, and laptops generally never left desks, device offboarding was more straightforward. Employees could just hand their devices back to IT on their last day, and IT could handle it from there.
But now that the majority of companies are distributed, and their teams are spread across cities and continents, device offboarding is a much more complicated process.
Firstly, the financial repercussions of getting device offboarding wrong are huge. Devices are expensive assets to lose or damage. A lost work laptop is estimated to cost over US$49K in total.
It’s also important to offboard devices properly to ensure compliance and avoid legal risks. A fifth of organizations say they have experienced data breaches from former employees. Given the average data breach is estimated to cost US$4.35 million, just one breach could financially cripple your company.
Finally, every interaction with your employees - whether incoming, mid-tenure, or outgoing - impacts your brand. If your departing employee’s offboarding experience is dominated by admin or inconvenience, this is what they’re likely to remember and share with others.
When offboarding devices remotely, there are two main considerations:
The closer your team members work to your HQ, the less you need to consider. But when you have teams based across continents, and/or employees in logistically challenging regions, there’s a whole host of things that can go wrong.
Broadly speaking, you have 4 options:
There is no one-size-fits-all approach. To decide the best course of action, you’ll need to consider everything from your hiring plans to the age and condition of the outgoing employee’s device.
However, no scenario is without its challenges. Below, we outline key considerations for each option, from hidden costs to the impact on employee experience.
The first thing you need to consider before sending a used device to a new hire is where the new hire is based. If your new hire is based in the same region as your outgoing employee, you don’t have too much to consider logistically. But Local laws or customs proceedings often create hurdles for sending items across regions.
For example, in some countries, you need the tax ID number of the person receiving the item. This is extra challenging if the new hire has recently arrived in the country and does not have a tax ID number set up yet.
Customs rules differ depending on where you are shipping to and from. And processing times are often longer the more valuable the items. So unless you have a robust process in place, moving devices between different regions could take up hours of your People Team’s time, while adding days or weeks to your new hire’s delivery date.
You also need to consider shipping costs and customs charges, which can increase drastically when shipping to certain locations. For example, to ship items to Brazil, you will have to pay 38% of the value of the item in taxes, and 60% in duties.
So for a laptop worth $1200, you will pay $456 and $720 in duties and taxes respectively. That’s $1176 in total - almost the price of buying the same laptop again. Then add the shipping cost, fuel surcharge, and brokerage fees, and the full cost of the shipment will undoubtedly be more than buying a new laptop.
However, irrespective of where your employees are based, you need to consider how transferring used devices can affect employee experience, for both incoming and outgoing employees.
If your outgoing employee has had their device for a while, it will probably be slow and outdated. While recycling a laptop in this way may be economical for you, it will create a poor onboarding experience for your new hire.
If input is needed from either employee regarding logistical issues (e.g. providing extra information to release an item from customs) this can also make for a time-consuming and sloppy onboarding and offboarding experience.
If your outgoing employee is based in the same country as your HQ, this may be relatively simple. But shipping costs from logistically challenging areas can skyrocket. Depending on how old the device is, the overall cost to ship that device to your HQ could be higher than the value of that laptop.
Perhaps your greatest concern with this option is IT security. Unless you wipe the device of all data before transporting it, you are vulnerable to a data breach. And with this average data breach costing over US$4M, this could financially cripple your organisation. .
While it is lower risk to wipe the device before shipping, it could be a big ask of an employee who is about to move on from the company - especially if their departure is not on their own terms. Even if they are very willing to comply with all formal offboarding processes, how do you know that all data has been securely wiped?
If the first two options are looking too costly, you might consider storing the laptop somewhere local to the outgoing employee, assuming you’ll hire again in that region soon. But there are cost and trust factors you need to account for.
With most storage facilities around the world, pricing changes depending on the size of the unit. So relatively, storing one laptop may not seem like a huge cost. A small storage unit in the Philippines, for example, can start at $30USD per month. But if you do not hire in the region again reasonably soon, the months will roll on, and the fees will add up.
Perhaps more pressing is the issue of security. Taking into account lost intellectual property and breached data, a lost or stolen work laptop is estimated to cost just under $50,000. In a remote location, with none of your own staff nearby to manage the space, leaving expensive equipment in a unit could pose heavy financial risks.
Gifting the device to your outgoing employee may seem like the easiest option from a logistics front. But nevertheless, there are things to consider before going down this route.
The first thing to consider is how old the device is. If the employee’s tenure was less than expected, their laptop may still have its best days in front of it. Are you happy to part with a laptop worth >$1000 for the sake of convenience?
As with all options, you need to factor IT security risk. You would have to be one hundred percent confident that the device has been securely wiped before gifting it to the outgoing employee.
There is also the issue of tax non-compliance risk. If you gift equipment to remote workers, you may need to report it on the employees' payroll, and tax return that a gift of a certain value was given to the employee. Employees may then face income tax and national insurance charges on the value of the equipment.
When offboarding company devices in-house, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The location of your outgoing employee will have a huge impact on the costs and complications involved.
That’s why at Hofy, we provide our customers with flexible device offboarding options, all actionable in a few clicks from our advanced equipment management platform. We take care of all the logistics, to spare your People and IT team 100s of hours.
And with our Mobile Device Management (MDM), you can remotely wipe device data before transporting your devices, to protect your data from falling into the wrong hands.
Avoid heavy shipping costs, navigating customs rules, and tax non-compliance, while creating a smooth offboarding experience for your employees worldwide with Hofy.
To see how smooth and easy it is to offboarding employee devices with Hofy, demo our platform today.
.jpg)
From defining your value proposition to launching with go-to-market, CPO & Co-Founder of Hofy Michael Ginzo outlines a simple plan for your startup marketing strategy.
.jpg)
There comes a time when the cost of depreciation outweighs the savings you made by buying in bulk - and it may be much sooner in a device’s lifecycle than you think.
Guarantee that the data on your devices is permanently and irreversibly destroyed to NIST 800-88 Purge standard. A certificate of completion will be automatically generated and uploaded to the Hofy platform.
.png){kind=small}
