How Shifting to Working from Home Affects Your ITAD Needs

As COVID-19 continues its spread throughout the world, the effect of the virus on businesses and their employees has been dramatic. Perhaps the most significant change has been the number of workers who have shifted to working from home. As businesses have closed their physical locations to comply with changes in local and state regulations, employees have been doing more and more of their work from home in order to keep the wheels of industry turning.

This shift has had a substantial impact on the way that companies deal with their IT assets. Some companies have purchased new assets for their employees, while others have chosen to rent or lease equipment. Whatever the case may be for your company, it’s important to think about what working from home means for your business and what will happen when your employees finally return to the building.

Purchasing New Assets

For many companies, it made sense to purchase IT assets for their employees to make working from home as efficient a process as possible, creating an intentional separation between work and personal devices.

For IT departments, a sudden rush of assets like this presents a difficult problem. All of these assets must be effectively tracked so that the company knows who has what equipment and where that equipment can be found. Because these new assets typically have integrated memory, they also represent a potential weak point through which data breaches can occur.

The other side to purchasing new assets is the question of what to do with them after the pandemic ends. While some jobs may remain remote, others will be brought back into a physical space as soon as possible, leaving IT to deal with a potential influx of excess assets.

While all assets will ultimately need to be accounted for, you’ll have to decide what to do with the excess, whether that means maintaining an extensive inventory or reselling the machines once their memory has been professionally wiped.

Renting or Leasing Assets

Some companies opted to lease or rent IT assets instead of purchasing them outright. While this approach can save some cash on the initial outlay, it also presents issues for data security. It’s also important to know who is responsible for the data on the rented equipment when the lease expires.

If the duty to wipe the rented machines falls on the company, you will likely need to bring in outside help to erase all necessary data, preventing liability exposure. In doing so, be sure to choose a company with experience in properly erasing all data, rather than just wiping the hard drives.

Replacing Outdated Assets

For some companies with employees already working from home, the primary impact from COVID-19 has been to change the nature of the work being performed. The demands to work from home have grown exponentially, and older equipment might not be up to new standards for performance. These companies face the added challenge of getting new assets to employees while securing the old assets to be decommissioned. Remember, keeping tight inventory control is even more critical when employees are working from home.

If you’re looking for help in dealing with IT recycling and data destruction, contact SEAM. We can take care of all your ITAD needs in South Dakota and North Dakota.