How do you manage remote employee asset management?

Posted by eyeballresort@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 20 comments

What's up?! First post here because I'm pretty new in my career and hitting a bit of a roadblock. My boss has tasked me with figuring out asset retrieving. I went down the path of attempting to figure it all out in-house but I can see that spiraling into an actual logistics nightmare. In my searching online, I've seen some companies exist that do it all for you. I've checked allwhere, Unduit, and workwize so far. Leaning towards allwhere because my boss will like the no contract lock in part. But I'm open to possibly doing it all in-house. So my question is: How do you manage this for your company? If it's done in-house, any price hacks I should know about?

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20 Comments

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ThrowawayWetNail@reddit

Top comment says: “asset retrieving is not an IT task. You can try but 9 out of 10 you will fail.” LOL I’m starting to believe people on Reddit don’t actually have jobs. OP clearly stated this was handed to them by their boss. If I took all Reddit advice, I wouldn’t have a job, either. Who is telling that to their boss?! Lmao. OP, I see your post edit and landing with allwhere. Good pick! We use them, too. You will be happy with that decision longterm.

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5thCharmer@reddit

Facts. haha. Seriously wild seeing people suggest to tough guy their boss to avoid doing a task. For the record i’m with allwhere too and think that’s easily the best option to take compared to similar.

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tzigon@reddit

Send return box with label to get back the hardware. Disable device in AD to prevent future use. Turn over to legal if they refuse to send it back.

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karateninjazombie@reddit

We hired a big muscular guy called Dave to go knock on their door and ask for the kit back. He even came with his own crow bar in case they refused! Great value for money.

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Frontpage1stPost@reddit

My company recently signed up for allwhere too. It's not something I manage directly. But I know the lady who does seems to be a lot less stressed out these days haha.

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aracheb@reddit

asset retrieving is not an IT task. You can try but 9 out of 10 you will fail. Asset retrieving is an HR and Legal issue, the most you can do is make sure the device get wipe of any company useful data if it is taken

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burnte@reddit

This isn’t really true. It’s mostly hr but it can do a lot. I set up a fedex account and we give our folks a barcode they can take to fedex with their laptop and just drop it off. There’s really nothing wrong with trying to help other departments, it’s how you get them to help you too.

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Pyrostasis@reddit

I think the guy was implying we can give the person a label to return the laptop, we can encrypt and lock the laptop so it cant be used by anyone, but we cant make / compel the person to return the equipment. Legal can send nasty grams to motivate folks.

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TheRealLambardi@reddit

^^^^^this 100%. IT and Legal process with a singular checklist that engages IT where needed. But getting assets is not and IT thing

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PlumtasticPlums@reddit

If you failed 9 out of 10 times, you did something very wrong.

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aracheb@reddit

I didn’t fail, I gave the task to the department it belongs. IT should not be engaging any user/Ex user and try to force the user hand to retrieve company assets. IT put some rmm, encrypt and protect the company data. Anything beyond that could backfire badly if an ex employee has enough knowledge of their rights, that is why those task belongs to legal and HR

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OneSeaworthiness7768@reddit

Asset *retrieving*? Like making sure employees return their equipment? That’s not my job. I don’t know why it would be yours.

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CarnivalCassidy@reddit

It like that episode of Arthur where he loses a library book. So the librarian [attaches a chain to the books in the future and winches the chain in](https://youtu.be/Ai0tJ4b53Tk?t=209) when they want the book back.

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stufforstuff@reddit

The answer depends on how many remote workers and the cost/value of the equipment they're loaned. Unless both numbers are large - it's just not worth the time or effort. Your Suites wanted to save alllllll that money on remote workers - they just have to except that providing those workers comes with a lost equipment cost. Otherwise you have to retrieve the equipment, sanitize it, repair it, reimage it, and box it up for the next sucker. Most companies send out cheap crap anyways - the loss is a blessing in disguise.

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ftoole@reddit

We have Ingram send boxes or labels for returns. We sometimes have people take a device to FedEx kinkos have them package and ship it back.

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PlumtasticPlums@reddit

It depends how big your org is. Some laces have HR do it, some have IT. At the very least, you need an account with a carrier like FedEx so you can generate prepaid labels. Then send them to the employee as soon as possible. If they are dragging their feet and not returning, you contact HR to be the "brute squad".

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wooties05@reddit

Dell embeds LoJack from absolut into their firmware. It's an additional cost it's the best way to lock the laptop down if you use Dell machines. The protocol is you (the IT team) can ask them for the laptop but HR should have a legal team in contact that can pursue retrieval if they never send. It is your job to give the user a shipping label / tracking number so you can monitor if they ever send it back.

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sryan2k1@reddit

The laptop gets locked. HR sends them a box with a prepaid return label for the laptop. They're allowed to keep any displays/accessories.

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crashorbit@reddit

I suspect you are talking about phones, laptops, monitors and the bags, cables, and other bits that go with them? and getting them back when the employee terminates? Most people are pretty honest. In my experience about 70% return their equipment if it is made easy. Another 10% return some of it when they get a reminder. The remaining 20% cost more to recover than they are worth. The solution to maximizing returned equipment is to set yourself up for success. Include packaging and a return label when the equipment is shipped out. Make it easy to find instructions on how to return equipment. Ensure that normal business workflows encourage use of cloud storage rather than local storage. Use encrypted local storage. Understand your costs and separate hurt feelings from balancing the books. Whatever you choose you still have a significant in-house component. You still have to track the asset and who had it last. You need to track the numbers and be able to report on success rates. You need to deal with the stream of equipment coming to you. If you add a vendor then you add vendor management to the mix. Be sure you track your return on that investment.

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natefrogg1@reddit

One thing we do is that our RMM and our EDR can basically brick the remote devices, if they choose to keep company property then we can at least make it so that property doesn’t even try to connect back to any our stuff Ultimately the physical return of equipment is outside the the realm of IT though, definitely an HR and or legal issue and not technical