4 Responses

1. There is a government incentive programme to get more families I
   Have a look at the following website http://www.staff-shop.co.uk this company participate in a scheme run by the Government that allows huge discounts to be applied to PCs where supplied by an employer. I read a while back that Powergen also ran a similar scheme, athough I can recall whethter it was available to cutomers or just employees. Hope this helps.

   John Wright

2. Company Equipment at Home
   Jane

   We have recently gone down the route of having employees based from home and providing them with computer equipment for that purpose. The legislation is a bit of a minefield!

   Just a few of the things you need to think about are:

   * Electrical PAT testing must be undertaken by the company for all their equipment. Can you get access to the equipment easily?
   * How can the company ensure the operating environment is safe? The company could be liable if someone was injured by this equipment.
   * Any accidents involving this company equipment have to be reported as a workplace accident.
   * How are faults reported and fixed?
   * How well will the equipment be looked after and can standards be enforced?
   * Who is responsible for insuring the equipment?
   * How do you deal with negligent damage?
   * With company equipment, the employee would be expected to abide by company regulations in respect of inappropriate e-mail and internet usage. How could this be policed?
   * How could the company police the storage and dissemination of information covered by the Data Protection Act?
   * Where the equipment is provided solely for business purposes, it would not normally be classified as a taxible benefit. This might not be the case if it is provided as a family perquisite.

   We have had to think long and hard about this and have put a fairly comprehensive policy in place that had to be vetted by our company lawyers, an expensive business!

   Sorry to be so negative, but you need to be sure of your ground before taking this step.

   Regards

   Phil Wheeliker

3. Home computers
   There is not really one area of law that covers this. The reason is that the law does not keep up until cases are brought to court to amend, show need or challenge existing legislation.

   The best you can do is prepare a contract which covers as many of the eventualities that concern the use of the computers and which should reflect the terms imposed in in-house policies also.Phil has itemised a checklist, yours might look different.

   I also note you mention the use of a computer for home/family use. Do you mean it is there for work purposes primarily but the boss says it is ok to use it for the kids’ homework? Or is it that all employees have been given some old PCs for personal use? The law on gifts is quite different,hence my question!

4. PCs@home
   In response to the comment about the Powergen home PC initiative, Kognita supports Powergen’s learning@home and learning@work services for employees – if you would like to contact me I can give you more information about who to contact in Powergen.