A return deadline with no booked collection behind it is a hope with a date attached. The deadline that works is not a date you give somebody, it is a date you have already arranged with a courier and told them about.
TL;DR
- Do not set a deadline for the person. Book a collection and tell them the date, which inverts who owns the action.
- Measure days from the last working day to the device arriving, not from when somebody sent a message.
- Three stages are worth separate targets: asked, collected, received and wiped.
- Decide the age at which you stop chasing before you need it, because a case-by-case decision is always made late.
- Chasing more than twice changes nothing. The second reminder is the last one with any effect.
- Publish the recovery rate quarterly, by market. An unmeasured programme gets treated as fine.
Why a deadline on its own does nothing
Telling somebody to return a laptop within 14 days puts the whole task on them: finding packaging, arranging a courier, choosing a time, getting it collected. The deadline adds a date to a list of actions they have no particular reason to complete.
Booking a collection for a named date and telling them inverts it. Now their action is to be in and hand over a box, and your action is the arranging. That is the whole difference, and it is worth more than any wording.
So the useful framing is not a deadline at all. It is an appointment, with a date, a window and a reference, communicated in the first week of notice while the person still has email.
The three stages worth measuring
| Asked | Target: day 3 to 5 of notice | While email still works. The stage most often late and the cheapest to fix |
| Collected | Target: last working day, or the next | Depends entirely on whether you booked it or asked them to |
| Received and wiped | Target: within 5 days of collection | The stage nobody measures, and the one that closes the data obligation |
Most companies measure the gap between the last working day and the device arriving, which blends all three and tells you nothing about which one is failing. Splitting them takes one extra date field and makes the diagnosis immediate.
The clock starts at notice, not at the last day
This is the single scheduling change that moves the number most, and it costs nothing.
During a notice period somebody still has email, still has colleagues, and still has a working relationship with the company. After the last day they have none of those, and the request arrives as an administrative demand from an organisation they no longer belong to.
So ask in the first week, with the collection already booked for the last working day. The device is collected while the person is still employed, which removes the entire category of post-employment chasing. And leave device management in place until the courier confirms pickup, because a machine locked at the start of a notice period is one nobody has any reason to hand over.
A worked example
A company reported an average return time of 34 days and a recovery rate just under 80 per cent. It had a written 14-day return expectation and a reminder sequence.
Splitting the 34 days showed where they went. The equipment message was being sent on average 6 days after the last working day, because it was triggered by the offboarding ticket closing rather than by notice being given. Collection took another 19 days, almost all of it waiting for the person to arrange one. Receiving and wiping took 9 more, because nobody was expecting the deliveries.
Only one of those three numbers was about the departing person’s behaviour, and it was the one everybody had been trying to fix with reminders. Moving the trigger to notice and booking the collections took the average to 11 days.
Chasing, and when to stop
Checklist:
- Send the equipment message once, in the first week of notice, with the collection date in it.
- Send one reminder two days before the booked collection, as a practical heads-up rather than a chase.
- If the collection fails, rebook once and confirm the address again, since a failed delivery is usually an address problem.
- Send a second and final reminder after a failed rebooking, naming the write-off date.
- Stop after that. A third reminder changes nothing measurable and costs goodwill.
- Record the write-off at residual value and close the register row rather than leaving it open.
The last point matters more than it looks. An open row nobody is pursuing is what degrades a register over time, and a device written off deliberately with a date is a cleaner record than one that stays open for three years.
Decide the age threshold in advance too. A machine issued eight months ago is worth a rebooking and a second reminder; a four-year-old laptop with a wiped drive and no warranty is frequently worth less than the effort, and deciding that case by case means deciding it late and inconsistently.
Disclosure: RemoAsset is owned by the same people who publish PeopleOpsHQ. It is relevant to the timing problem specifically because the collection is triggered by the offboarding record rather than by somebody remembering, which addresses the first of the three stages above. It publishes no price and requires a demo, it is much weaker for hardware it did not supply, and it is not a certified disposal vendor. The options are compared in our laptop retrieval comparison.
Final thoughts
A return deadline is a measure of what you expect from somebody else. An appointment is a measure of what you have arranged. The second produces better numbers because it moves the difficult part to the party that is still being paid.
Split the three stages so you know which is failing, move the ask to the first week of notice, book the collection for the last working day, chase twice at most, and write off deliberately when you do. Then publish the rate by market quarterly, because a programme nobody measures is one everybody assumes is fine.
Frequently asked questions
What is a reasonable deadline for returning a laptop?
The question itself is the problem, because a deadline leaves the arranging with the person who has least reason to do it. Book a collection for the last working day or the day after, tell them the date and window, and their action becomes being in and handing over a box. If you must express it as a target, measure the last working day to the device arriving and aim for under about 10 days, which is achievable only if you booked the collection.
When should you ask for equipment back?
In the first week of the notice period, while the person still has email, still has colleagues and still has a working relationship with the company. After the last day they have none of those and the request arrives as an administrative demand from an organisation they have left. Trigger the message from notice being given rather than from an offboarding ticket closing, since the second is typically several days after the last working day.
How many times should you chase a device?
Twice at most, and only one of those is really a chase. Send the equipment message once with the collection date in it, send a practical heads-up two days before the booked collection, rebook once if the collection fails and confirm the address again since a failed collection is usually an address problem, then send one final reminder naming the write-off date. A third reminder changes nothing measurable and costs goodwill with somebody who may be a reference or a rehire.
Should you lock the device if it has not come back?
Not during the notice period, and not before the courier has confirmed collection. A laptop locked at the start of a notice period is a machine the holder cannot use and has no particular reason to post back, which removes the last incentive in a process that already depends on somebody outside the company acting. Leave management enrolment in place so the device stays visible and controllable, and trigger the lock at the moment it physically leaves their possession.
Which part of the return process is usually slowest?
Not the part involving the departing person, which is where most effort goes. Split the total into three stages and measure each: when the ask was sent, when the device was collected, and when it was received and wiped. The ask is frequently sent days after the last working day because it is triggered by the wrong event, and the receive-and-wipe stage is rarely measured at all even though it is the one that closes the data obligation.
When should you write a device off?
After one failed collection, one rebooking and one final reminder, on a date you decided in advance rather than when somebody loses patience. Set the threshold by device age, since a machine issued eight months ago justifies the effort and a four-year-old laptop with a wiped drive and no warranty frequently does not. Record the write-off at residual value and close the register row, because an open row nobody is pursuing is what degrades a register over time.
