The True Cost of Shipping Laptops to Remote & Offshore Employees

Today,  remote and hybrid work has become ubiquitous. With this shift,  IT teams are being challenged more now than ever with shipping out more laptops to remote employees, contractors and offshore workers. The practice of preparing laptops to send out to new employees and retrieve them after they leave the company  is time consuming, tedious and costly.  

To ensure the laptops are secure, IT preconfigures and preloads them with approved corporate software and locks them down to restrict and monitor what the employee does with them. While the strategy may have worked well while in the office, it is proving to be less effective and efficient for remote workers.IT teams are spending more time supporting remote workers on an ongoing basis and chasing them down when they leave to get the laptop back.  

While shipping laptops to remote workers seems like a solution to the security challenges of remote work, most companies don’t understand the true costs of what it takes. And the costs can vary from company to company based on many factors. 

In this blog, we’ll dive into the different costs associated with securing remote work on company owned and managed laptops in order to better understand the true costs of shipping laptops to remote and offshore employees

The Negative Impacts of Shipping Laptops

Monetary Costs

Shipping devices to remote employees can be extremely expensive for an organization. Some of the costs that a company can incur include:

• Shipping Fees: The company will need to pay to ship the device, and, with high-value devices, will likely want to purchase insurance and tracking as well.
• International Fees: If the device is shipped internationally, the company may need to pay customs duties and taxes.
• Software and Security Costs: Shipping company-owned devices to remote workers places the responsibility for device configuration and security with the company. This introduces additional overhead for IT teams, incurring software costs for antivirus software , VPNs, GPS tracking and more.
• Storage Costs: Some companies attempt to avoid potential delays in acquiring devices by buying them in advance and holding them until needed. However, this can introduce additional storage costs and runs the risk that devices will be outdated before they are issued to a worker.
• Return Fees: If a device is returned for repairs, upgrades, replacements, or end of employment, the company will need to pay shipping fees, customs duties, etc., for the return shipment.
• Unreturned Devices: If a former employee refuses to return the device, then the company must either write it off or involve law enforcement to retrieve it. In some cases, a new employee may give up and find a new role before a device arrives, forcing companies to retrieve or write off devices from people who never worked a day for the company.

IT Costs 

Beyond the hard costs, shipping out and preparing devices for new remote employees or offshore workers can be a time consuming and tedious process. 

• Time Imaging and Setting Laptops: While the time it takes to set up a laptop may vary from company to company, It can take several hours to get them all set up and ready to go based on how much software needs to be installed or what needs to be locked down.
• Shipping and chasing: Your IT team needs to get all of those laptops boxed and shipped out. And when an employee leaves the company, you need to work with HR to chase them to get it back
• Repairs/Tech support: When employees have any issues with their laptop, they will call tech support for help. An employee spilled coffee on their laptop? Now they need to purchase and set up another new device for them. Not to mention other peripherals that may break down and need replacement like their mouse, keyboard or monitor. 
• Running a centralized inventory system:  IT needs to distribute and manage inventory of laptops, PCs, and other equipment and it can be a logistical challenge especially when there are no device management tools. 

For when a company has a large amount of new remote employees at the same time, this can be difficult to manage. The pressure to get them set up and delivered  on time for new hire start dates can cause IT to put in overtime or pause other projects in order to meet the deadline. 

Impact on Productivity

Shipping laptops can also negatively impact employee productivity. After the company hires a new employee, they won’t be able to start work until their device arrives. If a current employee’s device breaks, then their current work and projects are stalled until a replacement can be procured and shipped to them.

Companies can mitigate these delays by sourcing an employee’s new device locally and having a robust IT support system in place to configure and install corporate software on the device. However, this approach may increase the cost of the devices — depending on prices in the local market — and the complexity of ensuring that devices are properly configured before they are delivered to workers.

Employee Satisfaction and Retention

Shipping devices to employees can create delays if the employee is forced to use a company issued laptop. If laptops are delayed and employees need to wait for them to be delivered — or get an inferior device due to availability or cost — this can negatively impact new hire satisfaction and employee morale. It may also lead to employee churn if workers are frustrated about the inability to do their jobs and begin looking for alternative employment.

Environmental Considerations

Shipping devices to employees also has environmental impacts, including the fuel used by vehicles transporting the devices and the packaging that is used to protect them — which is often discarded afterward. Forcing employees to use company-owned devices also contributes to the growth of e-waste since these devices may only be used during the employee’s tenure with the company and may then be discarded.

Many companies have a renewed focus on their responsibility to minimize their carbon footprints.  This is especially true with the introduction of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in the EU, which requires companies to report on and reduce their climate footprints.

For a distributed or remote-first company, shipping devices to employees and off-shore contractors may comprise a significant portion of the organization’s carbon footprint and is an easily eliminated source of emissions. In fact, end-user devices are bigger carbon emitters than data centers, and reducing or eliminating new devices purchased for employees can reduce related carbon emissions by an estimated 50-60%.

Strategies for Cost Management

Since shipping devices is expensive and has the potential to introduce various risks to the organization, it would make sense for companies to look at a number of possible alternatives:

• Partner with a specific shipping provider: If a company pays the published rates for shipping devices and chooses the provider randomly, then shipping devices can be a costly endeavor. Building a relationship with a particular provider may offer access to lower, bulk rates for shipping the company’s devices to remote workers.
• Allow employees to purchase devices locally: Most employees can work from almost any device. Providing a technology allowance that enables employees to purchase devices locally eliminates the costs of shipping, enables employees to use a device they like, and ensures that remote workers are using company-owned devices. However this would create a burden on both IT and the employee to install software remotely. 
• Introduce your workforce to Venn’s Secure Enclave: Forget about shipping devices altogether. Venn’s Secure Enclave creates a secure, isolated environment for corporate data and applications on an employee’s personally owned device. This will eliminate the need to provide remote employees with corporate laptops while avoiding the security risks of traditional BYOD.

Next Steps for IT

Companies have several options for managing the security risks of remote work. In most situations, shipping laptops to remote workers is not the best fit for the company. With remote work growing more common, IT teams should consider how best to support and secure their remote workforces. And often, a more modern, technical solution can decrease both cost and risk to the company in the long term.

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