Hello all:
I wanted to get some feedback on an issue at my place of employment that is quickly becoming political (went from a small brushfire to now involving the SR. VP of HR, the CFO and the CIO).
What has happened is that a team (of which I am a part) was created to evaluate the validity of requests for new PCs (both desktops and laptops). Most of the time, it is pretty cut and dry. Sometimes, we need to probe further to determine if it is a WANT request as opposed to a NEED request (i.e. employee wants a laptop, but could really get by with a desktop).
Without going over the entire specifics of the situation, I wanted to ask all of you: when determining what hardware to purchase for an employee (specifically, PCs), what criteria do you use to assign the appropriate hardware?
Any helpful comments would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!!
P.S. Some further details may prove helpful, to put things into context:
We have about 14 core sites located within a 50 mile radius.
In the instance that created the mess, the employee travels to the sites an average of 2-3 days per month, and does not go out of town for any business purposes.
Our ‘standard’ desktop costs about $1400, and our laptops come in at about $2800. We are not-for-profit, so money does play a role in determinations.
Working from home/flex scheduling is encouraged/supported by the employee’s manager (and his manager), but is not really supported/encouraged on the whole within the organization (and definitely not by the people that ultimately control the $$$)
This employee is on a team that has another 7 people doing the same exact job. Whatever hardware she gets will directly impact what those 7 others get (8, when you count her manager) within the next couple of months.
