Managing remote employee devices overseas—from onboarding to offboarding
In an age of remote work, IT admins can’t always walk down an office hallway and manually get a new employee’s computer up and running. Companies today are spread across home offices that can span continents, leaving employers with the tall task of managing hundreds of disparate devices, each with niche configurations tailored to the individual employee.
While the pandemic-induced work-from-home renaissance has opened up global hiring opportunities and given knowledge workers more autonomy, it’s also ushered in a new, logistical problem: the handling of employees’ equipment. How can you get a device out to a new hire overseas before they start work, keep it protected from cyberattacks, update it as their role changes, get it back once they leave—and then replicate the process across your global team ad infinitum?
We’ll guide you along the path of least resistance to minimise any headaches and ensure you comply with international rules.
Step #1: Understand your employees’ device needs
Employers are typically responsible for providing the equipment employees need to do their job. But there’s a bit of a grey area with remote team members working from home offices.
Companies don’t always have to provide laptops and other devices to new remote employees. Some businesses institute a bring your own device (BYOD) policy where remote employees supply their own computers. While using personal devices cuts costs, it can leave employers vulnerable to security risks.
You should check the local requirements before deciding on your device policy, as different countries have different rules. In Australia, workplace laws don't specifically mandate employers to reimburse employees for home office expenses. However, Croatia and Chile, for instance, both require employers to reimburse all home office equipment. In the US, California has a similar reimbursement policy.
Even if not required, it’s common for employers to provide work-from-home stipends for remote employees to offset the cost of home office supplies.
Step #2: Buy and ship the devices
Your remote employees’ device requirements depend on their role. A company mobile phone (and headset) can work as a smart desk phone stand-in for salespeople to communicate with clients. It can also help social media managers oversee brand accounts, and can be given to entire teams—even coworkers across multiple time zones—to ensure consistency across the same operating system and easy access to collaboration apps.
As an added bonus, you could also invest in ergonomic work equipment, like an external keyboard and mouse, to lessen the chance of neck, back, and shoulder injuries. Some jurisdictions have ergonomic requirements that influence the kind of equipment you should buy. Safe Work Australia, for example, sets guidelines to ensure that workstations, including those used for remote work, meet ergonomic standards to prevent musculoskeletal injuries. This includes recommendations for adjustable furniture and equipment setup to support proper posture and reduce strain.
All the variability between regional requirements and needs for different jobs can make it difficult to choose and ship devices—especially at scale, when you want to manage all of them. However, it’s important to ensure your remote employees have the devices they need ahead of their start date or promotion. Therefore, it’s a good idea to look for a solution that allows hiring managers to quickly purchase and ship devices as part of the onboarding process.
Step #3: Set up employee access and permissions
Before remote employees can work on their new devices, you need to ensure they’re set up with all the apps, tools, and integrations your company uses, and that you can manage them from afar. The devices should be set up for IT support and cybersecurity protections while also allowing employers to remotely provision and de-provision apps depending on the employee lifecycle.
With Rippling, you can instantly set up and secure employees’ accounts, knowing that every employee has the necessary access and permissions from day one. Rippling provides one unified place to set up, manage, and disable all of your employee apps, from Google Workspace to Slack.
Step #4: Ensure devices stay secure and up to date
Once your remote employees have their work devices configured for the job, you need to make sure they’re protected. Look for IT solutions that can hide OS updates until you verify that they’re reliable and then remotely implement them on company devices. You also want a reliable endpoint protection platform (EPP) that detects cyberattacks and prevents them from spreading.
Moreover, employers should be alerted when there’s a security threat. Rippling integrates with SentinelOne, which flags breaches (you can set up email or Slack notifications) and allows admins to quarantine files and safeguard sensitive information. Rippling can also mine from its expansive employee data to run reports on encrypted devices and security installations across all connected devices. Employers can know which devices are being threatened and which employees, teams, and locations are thereby impacted.
Step #5: Retrieve employee devices when they leave
If you provide employees with company devices when they start working, you need to collect those same devices when they stop. When an employee at or near company headquarters moves on, this is relatively straightforward (albeit tedious); they can hand-deliver all equipment they got when they started or ship it back.
With Ripping, you can use Inventory Management to eliminate any busywork. This 'cloud IT closet' automatically ships a return box and prepaid shipping label to the employee, sends it to a secure warehouse to get wiped and assessed, and if up to standards, ships it off to a new hire. You can also build a 'device return' custom workflow into the Rippling HRIS, which notifies IT admins once an employee is offboarding if an automatic device return hasn't been arranged.
Managing employee computers remotely
Your company’s IT footprint doesn’t need to be confined to one physical office space. Manage your entire fleet, end-to-end, from a single dashboard. Use Rippling to:
- Configure apps and set permissions.
- Automatically install secure OS updates and detect cyber threats.
- Wipe devices, then ship them off to new employees.
Learn more about Rippling’s mobile device management and strip away the busy work for your remote workforce.
Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal, or accounting advice. You should consult your own tax, legal, and accounting advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.
