Remote workers won’t stop destroying their business laptops and smartphones
Smartphones are taking a beating
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Remote workersjust won’t stop destroying theirbusiness laptopsand smartphones, and with gear getting more expensive, and people traveling more in the post-Covid era, the costs are quickly mounting up.
This is according to a new report from Direct Line, based on a surveying of 2,000 UK adults, which states that almost a quarter (22%) of those who travel with business-owned technology manage to damage it.
What’s more, a further fifth (19%) have previously lost their work hardware, while 14% have had it stolen from them.
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Breaking expensive gear
Most of the time, employees break or lose theirbusiness smartphones(50%), followed by laptops (34%) andtablets(24%).
Dropping or knocking an item (27%) is the usual way people damage corporate gear, while 18% just leave it somewhere and forget where they placed it. A tenth poured a drink on the device, while some (7%) managed to get their gear cracked by another colleague.
The gear is getting more expensive, as well. The average worker now carries more than $1,400 worth of equipment, while a tenth (9%) carries with them technology that can cost as much as $3,800.
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With the transition tohybrid working, Direct Line expects workers to travel more in the coming months. Almost a third (30%) said they’d be using more shared workspaces now, while a fifth (19%) said they will be traveling to a work event or conference in the near future.
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For Alison Traboulsi, Marketing Manager at Direct Line, insuring company-owned technology has never been as important as it is today. A fifth of businesses now insure technology for employees that travel to different locations.
Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.
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