Navigating the Ins and Outs of Employee-Owned PCs

by Ann All, IT Business Edge
Aug 27, 2010 12:08:20 PM

Some companies are considering a model in which they reimburse employees to purchase their own PCs. (Read Ann All's interview with Gary Lee, CTO of Carfax.) Though it can work for some organizations, Brendan Keegan, president and CEO of IT service provider Worldwide TechServices, tells Ann that a number of support and other issues must be considered.

All: Some folks whom I’ve interviewed that let employees purchase and use PCs of their choice at work expect employees to provide much of the support for the machines, with help from the manufacturer or other entity who sells them the machine. Do you think this is a workable model?

Keegan: If people who aren’t used to buying technology are buying warranty and support services, they may get a contract with a five-day return to a depot or something like that. That’ll make them effectively an unproductive employee for five days. One employee might do a good job purchasing support while another  may not. Most people know from experience you can call an OEM and be on  the phone three or four hours trying to solve a problem. If you have an  employee support model, you might have an employee on the phone the  better part of a day trying to get their PC fixed instead of sending an automated ticket in to their own IT staff. You have to watch out for lost productivity. If companies are looking at doing this for cost savings, I think they’ll see they aren’t going to save money.

If they are looking to do it for employee choice and to present a benefit, that’s a different angle. But even then, if you have an inside sales team and an employee can’t earn a commission because his or her PC is down for three or four days, they may no longer regard it as much of a benefit. On the benefit side, HR professionals usually say the rule is always "do no  harm." These kinds of programs look good when they are launched, but  what if, six months later, an employee drops the PC.  The company will  then say, “Hey, that’s yours.” Now what was a perceived benefit doesn’t  look so good. It’s a good benefit when things are going well.

You have to start with your rationale for doing it. If it’s a medium to large company, I’m not sure how they’d do it from a support standpoint in terms of images on all the computers. Large corporations buy enterprise applications which they can’t extend to individuals. In that instance, cost per employee would increase. Even though the employee owns the PC, the company is still responsible for  sensitive data. So if someone sends it off to The Geek Squad or some local guy whose number they got off a telephone pole, that’s going to create issues.

All: And it wouldn't be realistic to expect internal staffs to support different makes and models of machines.

Keegan. Right. That just wouldn’t be an option, to try to expand your IT skill set across multiple vendors.

All: I suppose a third option would be to purchase support from company that services a wide variety of PCs? Then, you could offer employees a pre-determined variety of options from which to choose.
Keegan: For smaller businesses that can contract with a single provider and offer a set of choices, that becomes manageable. The cost of support will still be higher than supporting a standard footprint. But the model is possible.

Where I think this would be strong is for small businesses with limited numbers of offices, especially in industries with a creative flair where people would see it as a strong benefit, things like graphic design or architecture or interior design.

All: We've already touched on support, security and software licensing costs. Are there any other things companies need to consider?

Keegan: Another thing is intellectual property. What if the employee decides to leave? What on the PC belongs to the individual vs. the company, and how does the company verify the employee doesn’t have any information that he or she shouldn’t? So any companies with patentable products probably aren’t going to want to do this. That aspect has to be well thought out.

All: Desktop virtualization is often presented as a way to deal with several of the issues you've raised. What's your take on that?
Keegan: Yes, it can work. But when an asset isn’t yours, you are limited as to how much you can dictate how it’s used. We have employees that use their own cars and employees that use company-owned cars. I can tell the employees with the company-owned cars to wash them every week  and to get maintenance every 3,000 miles. I have a much greater measure of control over what they do with that asset. I have no control over employees with their own cars.

You can make policies for individually-owned assets, but it’s much tougher to enforce them. So if you’re telling employees to do regular backups on PCs, some of them may be resistant to that. If I have a will or divorce papers on my PC, I may be sensitive to backing up that kind of data. Even though technology can set the hard drive up with partitions, the perception may be that’s not good enough. Employees may still be uncomfortable with it.