Instruction to the staff keep the laptop safe

[genesis]

Hi

The staff are very careless in using the laptops and when moving from one place to another, the new laptops are dropped from utter carelessness and becomes faulty when we have budget constraints to buy another laptop.

I would like to send an email to all the staff with instructions as how to keep safe.

Please help let me know some good points and suggestion that I can add to the mail.

 

Thanks in advance

[synaesthesia]

Laptop policy should cover that, find some examples and get them in place immediately after SLT ratify it. Make them responsible for the care of their laptop and that they will not be replaced/will be replaced by an old spare which will be unbearably slow. Lack of care is disrespectful and they should be old enough and ugly enough to know what responsibility is.

[6Foot2]

...will be replaced by an old spare which will be unbearably slow...

I have had to repeat this many times to our staff: There is no such thing as a spare laptop/projector remote/monitor/...

 

This is because they seem to think that our office is a bottomless source of IT kit rolling out anything asked for on demand. The need for the item to replaced, invariably, is the result of carelessness or vandalism both of which are unacceptable reasons when asking for another bit of kit we had already issued.

 

[TechMonkey]

Urgh, it pains me to realise that looking after kit isn't an automatic instinct.

 

Ultimately this needs to come from SMT as this is a people problem, not a Tech problem. There needs to be penalties or someway to inconvenience the staff. If SMT aren't bothered, send the bills to them and find out whose budget it comes out of.

[mikkydoos]

@genesis

 

You've already lost the battle. It can't be won.

 

I've been out all week and come back to find a laser printer in bits in an IT classroom. I won't replace it.

[HarryMonkey]

Once, when two PDAs were stolen from a desk just inside an office, I was told by the head of department "If I'd known we were expected to be responsible for them we would never have accepted them"

[jthompson]

If it were me, I'd want to include points about how many years of service laptops are expected/needed to do for the school, and that laptops are a shared resources that will often get reissued to different members of staff or out to laptop trolleys for classroom use later in life. Some staff forget this and either take too much ownership (stickers, gold stars and googly-eyes on the lid) or not enough (the problem you have). Getting equipment through its first 2-3 years of service with minimal hardware support is what is expected, especially if it's equipment on an individual loan to staff. Pretty much all of our laptops start off with a few years of service for staff: the ones that get bashed about early on are usually the ones that eat up yet more support time when they're approaching end of service.

 

Whatever you write though, run it by your LM or SLT first and work out the specifics with them.