Employees forget work devices in the home office - and IT has to take the blame. Spontaneous loan requests disrupt support, tie up resources and cause unnecessary costs.
There are various theories as to why we forget things. Selective perception plays a major role: everyday actions are often not remembered. Added to this is the stress factor, which further increases forgetfulness. The result? Employees turn up at the office and realize that they have forgotten their work equipment - be it a charging cable, a headset or a mouse - in the home office.
What happens now? A colleague often can't help out because they need their own equipment. So they go to the IT service desk and ask for a loaner device. What is a quick solution for the employee means additional work for IT support.
Forgetting is human - but expensive for IT
Based on experience, each loan process takes around 10 minutes:
- Acceptance of the request
- Going to the warehouse
- Acknowledging the issue
- Return to the actual IT support issue
In most cases, this time is not taken into account - nor is the time lost due to the forced change of topic for the IT employee.
But that's not all: not all employees remember to return the borrowed IT asset at the end of the day. This is when the next additional expense for IT begins: follow-up calls, reminders, escalations to superiors or even billing to departments.
As many companies forego these processes due to the low individual costs, the losses add up to considerable amounts over time.
