A resignation email lands, and in most companies the equipment conversation doesn't start until the employee's actual last day, or later. That delay is one of the biggest reasons laptops don't come back — by the time anyone asks for the device, it's already been packed into a drawer and forgotten about.
Here's what to action in the first few hours, not the final week.
As soon as HR confirms a resignation, IT should get two pieces of information immediately: the employee's actual last working day, and a current address where a kit can be delivered — usually their home address, since remote employees rarely have a reason to visit an office before leaving. Don't wait for a formal offboarding meeting to gather this; ask for it the same day the resignation is acknowledged.
This is the step most companies get backwards. Sending a return kit only after someone has already left means the request arrives once the employee has mentally checked out, competing with their new job, reference requests, and general life admin. Dispatching the kit 5–7 business days before the last day means the device is already in transit, or already returned, before the relationship has even ended — while there's still a natural, cooperative context for the ask.
Before the device leaves the building (or, for remote staff, before it left in the first place), confirm what's actually on it — local files that haven't synced to shared drives, cached credentials, any locally installed licensed software. This is also the moment to trigger a remote wipe or forced password reset via MDM if you have it, independent of whether the physical hardware has been returned yet. Data security and hardware recovery are two different problems and neither should wait on the other.
Once the kit is dispatched, the request shouldn't disappear into an inbox. A tracked order — visible from a dashboard, not a spreadsheet — means you know within days, not weeks, if a device hasn't moved. Catching a stalled return on day 10 while the employee is still reachable and the situation is still friendly is far easier than discovering it three months later during an asset audit.
Sometimes a resignation happens with very little notice, and there's no runway to dispatch before the last day. In that case, treat the request exactly the same way — dispatch the kit immediately, framed as part of the final-day paperwork alongside returning a badge or laptop bag, and follow the same tracked process. The earlier the kit is in the employee's hands, the higher the odds it comes back.
The common thread across all of this: hardware recovery works best as a same-day reflex triggered by the resignation itself, not a task that gets queued up for "whenever the offboarding checklist gets actioned."
Get two things immediately from HR: the employee's actual last working day and a current delivery address, then dispatch a return kit 5–7 business days before their last day rather than waiting until it arrives.
Because the equipment conversation typically doesn't start until the last day or later — by then the laptop has often already been packed into a drawer and mentally filed as "dealt with later."
No. Triggering a remote wipe or forced password reset via MDM should happen independently of hardware recovery — they're two separate problems and neither should wait on the other.
Dispatch the kit immediately, framed as part of final-day paperwork alongside returning a badge, and follow the same tracked process — the earlier the kit is in their hands, the higher the odds it comes back.
