Shock report: Workers buying their own laptops, cell phones
- June 16th, 2008
- 6 Comments
If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time on the road, and a laptop and cellphone are vital to your work. I’m fortunate enough to have a job that takes care of the hardware issue, but many aren’t so lucky. Some people who travel have to buy their own equipment, and some people aren’t happy about it.
But there’s a question there. What should an employee reasonably be expected to own on their own? If you’re in certain industries, you’re to wear a suit to work, but the company doesn’t buy your suits for you. So why would a laptop be any different?
I’m not saying it’s right, I think an employer has a responsibility to provide everything an employee needs to do his or her job, especially hardware, but the argument that certain things are expected — a telephone, a computer — in this modern time is a good one.
hawk88 (Who am I?)
5 months ago
Phone, sure, couple hundred bucks tops 50 for one that makes calls, laptop… crappy ones go for like 400 starting, a good one can get really expensive. You can get a suit for a reasonable price if you don’t buy new or shop around. And having to buy clothes is pretty common place for an employer to expect of its employee, but a laptop too. Weak.
Mark L (Who am I?)
5 months ago
omg comments thing looks all crazy broken.
On a related note, the company I work for gives us laptops and stuff for work, be it from home or travel. Because they’ve got to encrypt the hard drive and connections and all that jazz. We even get to specify if we want a ‘beefy’ machine or an ‘email checker’. I mistakenly asked for the email checker when I was on business travel for over a month….always go beefy.
I don’t know about cell phones though. I know some higher ups use blackberrys and iphones and all those other cool phones that I’ll never get because my razr will haunt me forever, but I don’t know if the company gave it to them or not. And I work for a huge company, so if they did such things, I’m sure they wouldn’t tell us to buy our own.
Rich (Who am I?)
5 months ago
My former company gave us laptops and cellphones (usually Dell and Blackberry, respectively). Unfortunately, they were the worse pieces of older crap and were cycled on a 3 year schedule.
I would have loved to receive an IT allowance to purchase my own or some kind of incentive. Given that the amount of “corporate dollars” charged my department to “purchase” the company provided devices was anywhere from 3 to 5 times the amount it would cost to buy more feature rich up-to-date technologies, it would have been a benefit to go out and purchase my own.
My situation was unique and was within a very large corporation. A small business would have a different cost structure and it might be necessary for employees to buy their own… not such a bad idea if you have the money.
Spike (Who am I?)
5 months ago
One very good reason: standards.
If employees buy their own laptops, they can and will buy many brands and models (and many will choose the cheapest or worst crap). Then the MIS department will need to support all of them, which would drive up costs on that end and offset any savings from not buying the equipment.
I don’t particularly like the laptop my company has given me and cast jealous stares in the direction of anyone I see who has an MBA or Lenovo 300 or a tiny Vaio. But I’ll stick with what I get for free.
Press Cot (Who am I?)
5 months ago
If my employer wants me to have a cell phone and laptop to do the job, they can buy one for me. Why should I bear their cost of doing business? It’s like the feds mandating that the local schools meet certain standards w/o funding them.
dwalk51 (Who am I?)
5 months ago
They should provide the laptop, but not necessarily the cell phone. Because you use the laptop for mainly work purposes, but the cell phone you use all willy nilly with your buddies and what not. Perhaps a discount towards the cell phone would be sufficient, but I don’t think the whole thing is the company’s responsibility.