Remote and hybrid work have changed how companies think about equipment.
When your team is spread across different cities, time zones, or even countries, getting the right tools to the right people takes more planning than it used to.
The numbers back this up. When employees have a well-designed remote setup, 77% report being noticeably more productive. On the flip side, a missing monitor, a slow laptop, or the wrong software can quietly drain output, morale, and eventually retention.
Equipping your remote employees well doesn't have to be complicated. It just takes knowing what they need, why they need it, and how to get it to them before day one.
In this guide, you'll find a category-by-category breakdown of everything remote employees need to do their best work, including hardware, peripherals, software, and security, along with practical guidance on what makes sense for each role.
And since Workwize helps companies procure, manage, and retrieve IT hardware across 100+ countries, this guide is built on the realities of what actually works at scale.
TL;DR
- When employees work remotely, the company is responsible for ensuring they have access to the right equipment. Equipment includes a laptop, a reliable internet connection, a comfortable workspace and the software to collaborate with their team.
- There are five major ways companies get equipment to remote employees: buying and shipping it directly, giving employees a budget to purchase their own, reimbursing purchases after the fact, leasing through a managed provider or letting employees use personal devices.
- Ergonomics refers to the physical comfort and sustainability of an employee's workspace. Employees who spend long hours at a poorly set up desk develop back, neck and wrist problems over time that affect their ability to work.
- Software allows remote employees to communicate, collaborate on documents, manage their work and stay secure while doing it. The tools a company chooses determine how smoothly day-to-day work runs across time zones and whether company data stays protected on devices that IT cannot physically access.
- Workwize is a hardware lifecycle management platform that helps you handle the entire equipment process in one place. It helps with everything from ordering and shipping devices to employees in 100+ countries, to tracking assets, managing MDM enrollment and recovering devices when someone leaves the company.