TL;DR
- Remote work equipment is everything a person needs to do their job from somewhere that is not your office. The laptop is the part everybody thinks about and the smallest part of the problem.
- If people come into an office most days and work from home occasionally, you do not need a kit list. You need a laptop and somewhere to plug it in.
- Four things determine whether somebody can actually work: a machine, a display arrangement that does not wreck their neck, somewhere to sit, and a connection. Companies fund the first and ignore the other three.
- The decision that matters is not what to buy. It is whether the company owns the kit or the person does, because that single choice determines what happens at the end.
- Health, safety and ergonomics obligations for home workers differ by jurisdiction and are a matter for your own advice, not for a vendor page.
- Done properly, nobody mentions their equipment. That is the whole measure of success.
The Chair Nobody Budgeted For
A company moved to remote-first in its third year and did it properly, by its own account. Everybody got a new laptop, a budget was agreed, and the policy was written in an afternoon. Eighteen months later an engagement survey came back with a theme nobody had anticipated: a cluster of complaints about back pain, and a smaller cluster about not being able to hear people in meetings.
The laptops were excellent. People were using them on kitchen tables, on sofas, and in one case on an ironing board, hunched over a 13-inch screen for seven hours a day. The company had spent roughly 1,400 pounds per head on computers and nothing at all on the surface the computer sat on or the chair the person sat in.
The fix cost less than the laptops had. A display, a chair and a headset came to a few hundred pounds per person and resolved most of the complaints within a quarter. What this company had done was fund the equipment that IT understands and ignore the equipment that determines whether somebody can work comfortably for eight hours. That split is almost universal, and it exists because laptops have an owner inside the company and chairs do not.
Best tools for Device Management
This is what a remote work equipment arrangement is supposed to solve.
When You Don't Actually Need a Kit List
When the manual way is genuinely fine
Office-first companies where people work from home one or two days a week. A laptop that travels and a docking arrangement at a desk covers it. Nobody is spending a full week at a kitchen table, and the kit question genuinely does not arise.
When friction starts appearing
The first signal is usually a request you have no answer to. Somebody asks whether the company will pay for a monitor, and two managers would answer differently. The second signal is quieter: people buying their own equipment without asking, which looks like initiative and is actually a sign that asking felt pointless.
When it becomes a liability
Once people are working full-time from home, the question stops being a perk and becomes a working-conditions question. What obligations a company carries for a home workspace varies considerably by jurisdiction, and that is a matter for your own legal and health and safety advice rather than something to be decided from a blog post. What is universal is that discomfort shows up as attrition and sick days before it shows up anywhere you are looking.
The edge case that forces it
Hiring somebody who cannot physically work from the setup they have. A person in a shared flat with no desk space, or somebody with an access requirement that a standard kit does not meet. Both expose the absence of a process, and both are poorly handled by a policy written around a single standard bundle.
Five Questions People Ask
"Will the company pay for a monitor?" Decide once and publish the answer, because this is the single most frequently asked equipment question and inconsistency on it is corrosive.
"What if I already have a good setup?" Most policies have no answer and should, because paying for equipment somebody already owns is waste and refusing to recognise it feels mean.
"Whose is the chair when I leave?" Almost nobody writes this down, and it is the clause that matters most at the end.
"Can I expense a better keyboard?" The answer is usually yes within a limit, and the limit should exist in writing before somebody asks.
"Who pays for broadband?" The most contested item on the list, with the weakest consensus and the most jurisdictional variation.
The Four Things That Actually Determine Whether Somebody Can Work
Equipment lists get long. These four decide the outcome and the rest is preference.
The machine. Specified by role, and the part your existing process already handles. Nothing more to say about it here.
The display arrangement. A laptop screen at desk height puts a person's neck at an angle for the whole working day. Either an external display at eye level or a stand plus a separate keyboard solves it, and the second option costs very little. This is the highest-value item on the list per pound spent and it is the one most often left out.
Somewhere to sit. A dining chair is fine for an hour and not for a year. This is the most expensive item on the list and the one people are least likely to buy themselves, because a decent chair costs more than most individuals will spend on furniture for a job they might leave.
The connection. Not just broadband but the ability to be heard. A headset with a decent microphone is a small cost that changes how a person is perceived in every meeting they attend, which is a career effect rather than a comfort one.
| Item | Typical cost per head | What it fixes | How often funded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Laptop | The largest single line | The job itself | Nearly always |
| Display or stand plus keyboard | Modest | Neck and posture for 8 hours a day | Sometimes |
| Chair | Second largest | Back pain, which surfaces as sick days | Rarely |
| Headset | Small | Being understood in meetings | Occasionally |
So the pattern worth noticing is that the three cheapest items on the list are the ones most likely to be missing, and together they cost a fraction of the machine. A company funding only the laptop is funding the part of the setup that was never the problem.
The Ownership Question, Which Is the Whole Decision
Everything else follows from this. For each item on your list, the company either owns it or the person does, and the choice has consequences that arrive two years later.
Company-owned. The company buys it, it goes on the asset register, and it comes back at the end. This gives consistency, a standard you control and an asset with residual value. It also creates a retrieval obligation for every item, and retrieving a chair from another country is not the same proposition as retrieving a laptop.
Employee-owned, company-funded. The company pays, through a stipend or an expense, and the item belongs to the person. Nothing to recover, nothing to track, no retrieval cost, and no asset. This is the right answer for low-value items and a questionable one for laptops.
Employee-owned entirely. The person uses what they have. Free, and you have no idea what anybody is working on.
The arrangement that works for most distributed companies is a split rather than a single rule. The company owns the computer and anything holding company data. The person owns the furniture. That line is defensible, easy to explain, and matches the economics: a laptop is worth retrieving and reissuing, a desk is not worth shipping across a border.
| Item | Sensible owner | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Laptop and phone | Company | Holds data, worth reissuing, must be recoverable |
| Monitor | Company, usually | Worth reissuing, ships reasonably |
| Keyboard, mouse, headset | Either, often employee | Low value, personal preference, poor resale |
| Chair and desk | Employee, funded | Shipping cost exceeds residual value |
And write the split down per item. The failure mode is a policy that says the company provides equipment without saying which items the company expects back, which produces an awkward conversation about a chair during somebody's last week.
What to Do About People Who Already Have a Setup
A common and badly handled case. Somebody joins with a good monitor and a chair they bought themselves, and your policy offers both.
Paying for duplicates is waste and refusing to acknowledge the existing setup feels petty. Three approaches work, and the worst outcome is having no position at all.
Offer the equivalent value in something else they need. Simple, generous, and prone to drift unless capped.
Offer nothing and say why, clearly. Entirely defensible if the policy is about enabling work rather than about equivalence of benefit, and it needs to be said out loud rather than left implicit.
Buy it from them, at a sensible figure. Rarely used and occasionally the cleanest answer, particularly for a monitor, because it brings the item onto your register and resolves ownership.
What to do:
- Publish the position before somebody asks, not in response to the first request.
- Treat the answer as a working-conditions decision rather than a fairness negotiation.
- Keep a documented exception route for access requirements, separate from preference.
- Do not let managers improvise individual deals, which is how inconsistency starts.
- Revisit annually, because what people own at home changes.
Where the Jurisdiction Matters, and Where It Does Not
Two parts of this topic are genuinely dependent on where somebody works, and they get conflated with the parts that are not.
What differs by jurisdiction: obligations relating to a home workstation and its assessment, any requirement to contribute towards home working costs, how equipment provision or allowances are treated for tax, and what can be recovered if equipment is not returned. All four vary considerably, including between countries you might assume are similar, and all four are questions for your own advisers for each place you employ people.
What does not differ: whether a person can work comfortably for a full day. A badly set up workspace produces the same outcome everywhere, and no jurisdiction requires you to wait for a rule before fixing it.
So the practical approach is to design the equipment arrangement around the second category and have your advisers check it against the first, per country, rather than trying to derive a kit list from regulation. Companies that start from the compliance question tend to produce a policy that satisfies nobody and still does not answer whether to buy a chair.
Access Requirements and the Exception Route
This page has twice referred to an exception route without describing one, and it is the part of equipment policy most likely to be handled badly, because standard bundles are designed around an average person who does not exist.
Some people need different equipment to do the same job. A larger or differently positioned display, a particular input device, screen reading software, a specific chair, better lighting for lip reading on calls. What any of that obliges a company to provide depends on jurisdiction and circumstance and is a question for your own advisers. What is within your control is whether the route to asking is any good, and in most companies it is not.
Three things make the difference, and none of them is budget.
A route that is not a favour. If the only way to get different equipment is to ask a manager who then asks someone else, the request becomes a negotiation about whether the person deserves it. Publish a named route, ideally to People rather than to a line manager, and say in the policy that it exists. People who need it will find it; people who do not will not use it.
A decision that is separate from the budget conversation. Equipment needed for access should not compete with the discretionary allowance, because that turns a requirement into a trade-off against a monitor. Fund it from a different line and say so, which also stops managers refusing on budget grounds they do not control.
No requirement to explain more than necessary. Asking somebody to justify a need in detail, to a manager, in writing, is a reason people do not ask. Decide what level of information you actually need, which is usually much less than a default process collects, and ask for that.
What to do:
- Name the route in the equipment policy itself, not in a separate document.
- Fund access equipment from a line that is not the per-head allowance.
- Keep the information requirement proportionate and say who sees it.
- Make the same route available at any time, not only at onboarding, because needs change.
- Record what was provided against the person so a laptop refresh does not quietly undo it.
That last point is the one companies miss. Somebody receives a specific arrangement in year one, their machine is refreshed in year three by a process that knows nothing about it, and they have to ask again. Recording the arrangement on the asset record, not in an email thread, is what prevents that.
When the Home Cannot Accommodate a Workspace
The other case a kit list handles badly. A person in a shared flat with no room for a desk, somebody in temporary accommodation, somebody whose home is simply small. Shipping a chair to them does not help and may be actively unhelpful.
This is more common than equipment policies assume, and it correlates with being early in a career, living in an expensive city, or having recently moved, which means the people it affects are frequently the people with least standing to raise it.
Three responses work, and they are not mutually exclusive.
A co-working allowance instead of furniture. A monthly contribution towards a desk at a shared space, offered as an alternative to the home setup budget rather than in addition to it. For somebody with no room, this is worth considerably more than a chair.
Office access where you have one. Obvious, and frequently not offered to people hired as remote, because the policy treats remote and office as fixed categories rather than as a preference somebody might want to change.
A smaller, better-chosen kit. A laptop stand, a compact keyboard and a good headset take almost no space and solve the posture problem without a desk. The standard bundle's assumption of a dedicated room is what fails, not the idea of equipment.
| Situation | What a standard bundle does | What actually helps |
|---|---|---|
| No room for a desk | Ships a desk nobody can use | Co-working allowance |
| Shared or noisy space | Ships a chair | Headset, and office access if available |
| Temporary accommodation | Creates a retrieval problem | Portable kit, nothing bulky |
| Small space, long term | Nothing, because they did not ask | Stand, compact keyboard, headset |
So offer the budget as a choice between a home setup and a co-working contribution, capped at the same figure. It costs no more, it covers a population your kit list currently fails, and it removes the need for anybody to explain their housing situation to get a usable place to work.
How to Choose: Five Questions Before You Spend Anything
What came up in your last engagement survey? Equipment complaints rarely arrive as equipment complaints. They arrive as comments about focus, discomfort or meetings. Read the free-text answers before designing a kit list, because they will tell you which of the four items is actually missing.
What is the cheapest thing you are not funding? For most companies this is a display stand or a headset, and the cost of fixing it is trivial against the cost of a laptop. Start there rather than with the chair, because it is quick and it signals the direction.
Which items would you genuinely retrieve? Be honest. If you would not pay to ship a chair back from Spain, do not put it on the asset register and do not write a return clause for it. A return obligation nobody intends to enforce weakens the clauses you do intend to enforce.
Where are your people, and can you deliver there? A kit list you cannot fulfil in half your markets is a kit list that generates exceptions. Check what a provider can actually deliver in each country before publishing a standard bundle.
Who owns this list in a year? Equipment standards drift. Somebody needs to own the annual review, the exception route and the budget, or the policy becomes a historical document and individual managers start making it up.
Replacing Things That Break
Laptops get refreshed on a cycle. Everything else on the list gets replaced when it fails, and almost no equipment policy says what happens then, which leaves people either going without or asking a manager who has no budget line for it.
The items behave differently and deserve different answers.
Headsets and peripherals wear out fast. A year or two of daily use is normal, they are cheap, and the approval overhead costs more than the item. Set a figure below which people can simply replace something and expense it without asking, and the question disappears. Most companies set this far too low or not at all, then spend manager time approving a 60 pound purchase.
Displays rarely fail and are worth recovering. If the company owns them, a failure is a warranty question and a replacement from stock if you hold any. If the person owns it, it is theirs to replace, which should be stated rather than discovered.
Chairs fail slowly and invisibly. Nobody raises a ticket because a chair has become uncomfortable over three years. If the company funded it once with no replacement position, the practical outcome is that it is never replaced. A stated refresh interval, or a refreshed allowance after a set number of years, is the only thing that addresses this.
And company-owned items that fail need a route that is not the same as the laptop route. A broken monitor is not urgent in the way a dead laptop is, and treating both through the same process means the monitor waits behind genuine emergencies indefinitely.
| Item | Typical life | Who replaces it | Policy gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headset, mouse, keyboard | 1 to 3 years | Employee, under a self-approval limit | No limit set, so every request is a conversation |
| Display | 5 years plus | Company, from warranty or stock | No stock, so a failure means weeks |
| Chair | 5 to 8 years, degrading | Nobody, usually | No replacement position at all |
| Laptop | 3 to 4 years | Company, on a cycle | Usually handled well |
Checklist:
- Set a self-approval figure for low-value replacements and publish it.
- State who replaces employee-owned items, which is the employee, so nobody is unsure.
- Give company-owned peripherals a warranty and stock position, even if the stock is two units.
- Put a replacement interval on funded furniture, or accept that it is funded once only and say so.
- Separate non-urgent replacement from the break-fix route used for machines.
But the general principle is simpler than the table. Anything cheap enough that approving it costs more than buying it should not require approval, and anything the company does not intend to replace should be clearly the person's to replace. Most of the friction in this area comes from items that fall between those two positions because nobody decided which they were.
Six Options Worth Knowing
The relevant distinction here is between providers who will ship a laptop and providers who will ship a desk, because most will not do the second. Every platform below was checked against its own pricing page on 6 and 7 October 2026 and none publishes a figure. Two name a model without numbers: GroWrk describes a per-order option alongside a subscription tier, and allwhere refers to pay-as-you-go and fixed rates.
Firstbase
Best for: companies whose equipment arrangement genuinely covers the whole workspace rather than the computer.
Why companies choose it: desks, chairs, displays and peripherals are in scope alongside machines, which is unusual. For a company that has decided to fund the full setup, having one provider handle furniture and computers removes a genuinely awkward logistics problem.
Where it struggles: no published price. The breadth is only worth paying for if you really are funding furniture, and for a laptop-only arrangement it is paying for coverage you will not use. Furniture also has poor economics at the end, which is a reason to fund it rather than own it regardless of who ships it.
RemoAsset
Disclosure: RemoAsset is owned by the same people who publish HROpsLab. It is listed here because it competes in this category and because being precise about its scope is more useful than a recommendation.
Best for: the part of the kit list the company owns and expects back, which for most companies means the computer and anything holding data.
Why companies choose it: procurement, delivery, the asset record and retrieval run from one place, so the items you do intend to recover are tracked from purchase to return without anybody maintaining a separate list. Offboarding triggers the return automatically.
Where it struggles: it publishes no price and requires a demo. Its strength is the devices worth recovering, so if your question is who ships a desk to Portugal, that is a different provider's problem. It is not an MDM, so device policy enforcement sits elsewhere, and it is not a certified disposition vendor.
Workwize
Best for: multi-region fleets where regional storage makes reissue practical.
Why companies choose it: warehousing near people, with strong European coverage, which matters for items you intend to recover and reissue.
Where it struggles: no published price, and more capability than a two-country company needs.
Deel IT
Best for: companies already employing or contracting through Deel.
Why companies choose it: equipment requests sit alongside the employment record, so joining and leaving are already known events.
Where it struggles: quote-based, and most compelling as an extension of an existing relationship.
GroWrk
Best for: delivering kit into Latin America and parts of Asia.
Why companies choose it: in-country presence where others subcontract, which is where a standard bundle most often fails to arrive.
Where it struggles: publishes nothing, naming its models without attaching figures.
allwhere
Best for: United States-led companies with international staff and configuration requirements.
Why companies choose it: depth in deployment rather than only shipping.
Where it struggles: consultation-only pricing.
What Each One Published
| Option | Published price | Unit | Covers furniture |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firstbase | Not published | n/a | Yes |
| RemoAsset | Not published, demo required | n/a | No, devices and lifecycle |
| Workwize | Not published | n/a | Partially, varies by region |
| Deel IT | Not published | n/a | No |
| GroWrk | Not published, models named only | n/a | Partially |
| allwhere | Not published, consultation | n/a | Partially |
Checked against each vendor's own page on 6 and 7 October 2026.
The Decision Table
| Situation | Scale | Setup | Primary Pain | Recommended Starting Point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office most days, home occasionally | Any | Office-first | Nothing is wrong | A laptop and a dock |
| Fully remote, only laptops funded | Any | Remote | Discomfort, surfacing as attrition | Fund display and headset first |
| Back pain appearing in survey comments | 50 plus | Remote | Seating, the expensive item | A chair allowance, employee-owned |
| Two managers answer differently | 30 plus | Any | No published position | Decide and publish, before tooling |
| Funding furniture across borders | 50 to 500 | Remote | Shipping desks internationally | Firstbase, or a local allowance |
| Want the computer back, not the chair | Any | Remote | Mixed ownership, unwritten | Split ownership per item, in writing |
| Hiring into Latin America or Asia | Any | Remote | Delivery, not policy | GroWrk or a regional specialist |
| Access requirement outside the standard | Any | Any | A bundle that does not fit | A documented exception route |
Most companies sit in a policy row and a delivery row at once. Decide the ownership split before choosing a provider, because the split determines what you need a provider to do.
What Getting This Wrong Costs
The cost people look for is the equipment budget, and it is the wrong number. Funding a display, a headset and a chair for a whole company is a fraction of what the laptops cost and it is not where the money goes wrong.
The real cost is attrition and sick days, and it is almost impossible to attribute. Somebody who has been working at a kitchen table for a year does not resign citing furniture. They resign citing something else, and the discomfort was part of a general sense that the job was harder than it needed to be. That makes this an expensive problem to measure and a cheap one to prevent, which is precisely the combination that causes companies to under-invest for years.
The second cost is the retrieval obligation nobody meant to create. A policy stating that the company provides equipment, without specifying which items are company property, implies that everything comes back. Two years later somebody is working out whether to ship a desk from one country to another, and the answer is obviously no, at which point you are writing off an asset you never intended to own. Specify ownership per item and that problem does not exist.
The third is inconsistency. One person got a chair because they asked a sympathetic manager, another did not because they asked a different one. The equipment is minor and the signal is not, and it travels further and faster than anything written in a handbook.
So ask the diagnostic question plainly. Is this a budget problem, an ownership problem, or a delivery problem? A budget problem is usually smaller than feared and is solved by funding the three cheap items. An ownership problem is solved with a written split per item. A delivery problem is the only one that needs a vendor.
When You're Ready to Move Beyond Issuing Laptops
The signals are specific. Equipment themes appeared in survey free text. Somebody asked a question your policy could not answer. You are hiring people who will never see an office. Or you have realised that your policy implies you will one day retrieve a desk from another country.
When those are true, start with the ownership split rather than with a vendor, because the split is free to decide and determines everything you will ask a provider to do.
For the items you do intend to recover, which for most companies is the computer and anything holding company data, RemoAsset handles that specific loop from purchase through to return. It does not ship furniture, and a company funding a full home setup will need either a provider who does or a local allowance for the things not worth shipping. Both of those are worth looking at alongside the alternatives here.
And on home workstation obligations, allowances and the tax treatment of any of it, take your own advice for each country you employ in. Those answers differ more than people expect, and they are not something a vendor page, or this one, should be settling for you. What you can do without waiting for any of that advice is fund the display stand and the headset, which cost very little, fix the problem people actually report, and carry no complication in any jurisdiction.
Frequently Asked Questions
What equipment should a company provide for remote workers?
Four things determine whether somebody can work a full day comfortably: a machine specified for their role, a display arrangement that puts the screen at eye level, somewhere to sit that is designed for sitting, and a way of being heard clearly in meetings. Most companies fund the first and omit the other three, which is the wrong way round economically, because the three missing items together cost a fraction of the laptop and address the problems people actually report. Beyond those four, additions are preference rather than necessity and are best handled through a capped allowance rather than an expanding standard list.
Should the company own the furniture it pays for?
Usually not, and the reason is economics rather than generosity. A chair or a desk has poor resale value and costs more to ship between countries than it is worth, so putting furniture on an asset register creates a retrieval obligation you would never rationally act on. The arrangement that holds is to own what is worth recovering and reissuing, which means the computer and anything holding company data, and to fund rather than own the furniture. Write that split down item by item, because a policy that says the company provides equipment without specifying what comes back implies that everything does.
Who pays for broadband for remote employees?
This is the most contested item in remote equipment policy and it has the weakest consensus, partly because the answer carries tax consequences that differ substantially by jurisdiction. Some companies contribute a fixed monthly amount, some reimburse a proportion, and many pay nothing on the basis that the person would have a connection regardless. What this page can say is that whichever position you take should be published rather than decided per request, and that the tax treatment of any contribution is a question for your own advisers in each country you employ in rather than something to copy from another company's handbook.
What if an employee already owns a good monitor and chair?
Decide a position and publish it, because the absence of one is what makes this awkward. The three workable answers are to offer equivalent value in something they do need, to offer nothing while explaining that the arrangement exists to enable work rather than to equalise benefit, or to buy the item from them at a sensible figure so that ownership is resolved and it sits on your register. All three are defensible. What causes problems is leaving it to individual managers, which produces different outcomes for similar people and does more damage than any of the three positions would.
Are companies required to provide home office equipment?
That depends entirely on where the person works, and it is a question for your own legal and health and safety advisers for each jurisdiction. Obligations relating to home workstations, assessments of them, and contributions towards home working costs vary considerably between countries, including between ones that are otherwise similar. The practical approach is not to derive your kit list from regulation, which produces a policy that satisfies compliance and still leaves people uncomfortable, but to design the arrangement around whether somebody can work a full day properly and then have advisers check it against local requirements.
How much should a remote equipment budget be per person?
The useful way to think about it is as a ratio rather than an absolute, because what people need varies by role and location. The machine is the largest line and is specified by role. The display arrangement and headset together are a small fraction of the machine's cost and resolve most reported discomfort. Seating is the second largest item and the one individuals are least likely to buy themselves. Rather than setting a single figure, decide which items the company funds, cap the discretionary portion, and expect the total per head to be meaningfully less than double the laptop cost in most cases.
What happens to remote equipment when somebody leaves?
Whatever your policy says per item, which is why specifying ownership individually matters. The computer and anything holding company data should come back, and that return is worth arranging and paying for because the device has reissue value and a data obligation attached. Furniture and low-value peripherals are usually better left with the person, and saying so in advance avoids an uncomfortable conversation in somebody's final week. The failure case is a policy written in general terms that implies everything is returnable, which leaves whoever runs offboarding deciding case by case whether to pursue a keyboard.
Does equipment provision affect how an engagement is treated?
It can, in some jurisdictions, particularly where the question is whether somebody is an employee or an independent contractor, and the provision of company equipment is occasionally one of the factors considered. That is not a reason to avoid providing equipment, and it is a reason to take local advice before standardising an approach across a population that includes contractors. The sensible structure is to treat employee and contractor equipment arrangements separately and explicitly, rather than applying one policy to both and discovering later that it carried implications nobody evaluated.
HROpsLab takes no vendor money and publishes no paid placements, which is why the cheapest items on this page are recommended first.