Working from Home Personal Laptop??

Lje87

Hi everyone hoping someone can help 

Before the start of the pandemic I purchased a personal laptop - and it wasn’t the cheapest as I was doing photography as a hobby and needed to run photoshop smoothly so was around £699 at the time 

Then Covid hits I’m a team leader in a call centre that deals with online enquiries also.

So myself another team leader and my boss was asked to continue to work
from home for the department and everyone else was furloughed. There was no policy issued it was just crack on and do what we could. 

I started off working on my own personal laptop - then after a while requested I have a work one to my boss who had asked the directors / HR for one 

a year later I’m now hybrid - half in the office half from
home still using my personal laptop - boss has made several requests with nothing appearing after a year and a half - my little personal laptop has now semi broke, half the keys don’t work and been told by one of our IT guys that occasionally pop in - has said its nakered and would be a nightmare to fix because it’s apparently the type of laptop where they keyboard is in first so would have to take the whole thing apart - so for now using a keyboard hooked into the USB

Im trying to find out if I have any rights for reimbursement or just get a work laptop from my employees - or is it just tough luck and they don’t have to provide equipment 

SpiderLegs

This sounds like a great place to work. 

Tell them your laptop has packed in and you need them to provide you with one in order to do the job.

they may just sack you, but them’s the breaks when you’ve worked for a set of shysters for less than two years.

pmartin86

What make and Model is the laptop? It might be a bit fiddly but I'd very surprised if they keyboard wasn't replaceable.

Grumpy_chap

Lje87 said:

Hi everyone hoping someone can help 

Before the start of the pandemic I purchased a personal laptop - and it wasn’t the cheapest as I was doing photography as a hobby and needed to run photoshop smoothly so was around £699 at the time 

Then Covid hits I’m a team leader in a call centre that deals with online enquiries also.

So myself another team leader and my boss was asked to continue to work
from home for the department and everyone else was furloughed. There was no policy issued it was just crack on and do what we could. 

I started off working on my own personal laptop - then after a while requested I have a work one to my boss who had asked the directors / HR for one 

a year later I’m now hybrid - half in the office half from
home still using my personal laptop - boss has made several requests with nothing appearing after a year and a half - my little personal laptop has now semi broke, half the keys don’t work and been told by one of our IT guys that occasionally pop in - has said its nakered and would be a nightmare to fix because it’s apparently the type of laptop where they keyboard is in first so would have to take the whole thing apart - so for now using a keyboard hooked into the USB

Im trying to find out if I have any rights for reimbursement or just get a work laptop from my employees - or is it just tough luck and they don’t have to provide equipment 

How old is the laptop?  Is it still under warranty?  I am surprised that any keyboard would fail in a couple of years.

For work, doing large amounts of typing, it is usually better to have separate screen, keyboard, mouse in any case to get better posture.

Sandtree

Laptop keyboards are sometimes a pain to replace but they are very much replaceable. 

Your average person is going to take this up as a consumer rights issue with the vendor of the laptop and keep quiet on the fact its had some work use. 

Ideally you should be using a separate keyboard for your own sake but that aside the Mrs does freelance translation services and so does a LOT of typing on her personal laptop and its 5 years old and no keyboard issues. 

sheramber

You will need to work in the office for 5 days if you do have the necessary equipment to work from home and your employer will not supply it.

[Deleted User]

It's probably a Mac, the keyboards are fragile and riveted into the upper part of the body so replacement is very expensive.

The issue is that because the laptop was used for work it has worn out faster than it would otherwise have. The employer should contribute towards the cost of the fix. Sadly it sounds like the employer is rubbish so it might be like getting blood out of a stone.

nyermen

rigolith said:

It's probably a Mac

Can you buy a mac for £699?  Especially one capable of photoshop.

Sounds like a great employer - if they're a big company who should have a proper procurement system, even more so.
Ask the "IT guy who pops in" - what is the correct process for a laptop, since clearly "asking the directors for one" has achieved nothing.

pogofish

My place put a fairly strict line between personal and work equipment. Work machines used at home have to use a wired connection/VPN to be able to access their intranet and major staff/system-critical apps, whilst more generic stuff like email/MS Office/Teams/Creative Cloud etc can be used on personal devices and over Wi-Fi but with the proviso that home workers use an "approved/supported"suite eg MS-365 using 2-factor authentication to our work accounts - the number of licensed devices per user was increased from three to five for MS-365. Apps like Teams/Telephony/Sharepoint etc are further limited to work sign-ins only but I think you can still swap between work and personal licences for other apps.

Limited IT support for personal devices is offered as a courtesy but at a more basic level and over the phone/email only. Actual responsibility for the devices, maintenance/repair and the home internet provider remains firmly with the user. If you didn't have a work device that you could take home, you could also make a case for one to be supplied but relatively few of them have been granted since we came back from the last lockdown.  Mostly where there were identified medical/support issues IIRC.

Purchasing has also been extended to personal devices to allow people to keep secondary workstations at home but it is more aimed at supplying peripherals (monitors, keyboards, webcams, headphones etc) plus equipment to meet the H&S standards, not devices themselves and the quality/amount paid for some of the types of peripherals supplied for personal machines is lower.  Probably to reflect the assumption that we won't be seeing a lot of them come back.

Between raiding the IT scrapheap/store and moving my desk devices/configuration around, I've been able to keep my usual workstation at work and a basic workstation at home - all I need to do is take my work laptop between the two.  It worked out well as recently as last Friday, when Storm Arwen forced us to close early but I was quickly able to switch over and still met two deadlines from home by the end of the day.  At the height of lockdown, I could be working from up to three machines 2-personal 1-work) and an iPad at home, depending on how I felt/which room/part of the garden had the best light/heat that day!

london21

They will provide you a work laptop but not sure they will want to contribute to the one you already have.

My laptop was playing up so requested a work one which they bought.

Within 16 months, stopped working completely and i took it to them and they gave me a replacement. 

PraCh

Most laptops are an absolute pain to fix if they break. And very expensive. I normally buy laptops from Lenovo or Dell and then purchase 3 years onsite service for an extra 90 quid.

Getting a laptop keyboard replaced/repaired will likely cost you half the price of the laptop. Sorry - I know - not the answer you want to hear