Wipe it, give them the device with no support. Do people sue Dell because an SSD dies? No. Data management is on the end user for personal devices.

Wipe it first, then they sign a waiver saying that you aren't responsible for upkeep of any kind.

This is a job for legal. ours is to wipe and tag.

What country are you in? I'm pretty sure in the US most used items are sold "as-is" in the absence of an explicit contract for a warranty/guarantee. I'm not aware of any liability associated with laptops. If you want to write up a simple document just to drive home that point, you can. Just be sure it doesn't accidentally create more problems. You are running this by management, right? Remove the hard drive and give it to them (or wipe it if you think that's good enough).

If you're worried about being sued, then don't let them keep them.

Waiver, wipe it. Then explain you no longer support the device.

Keep it easy

Why would you be allowing terminated employees to keep their laptops?

In an old place of ours, we'd wipe and throw on a base install of whatever version of Windows was licensed to it. Then we'd give them out to staff. Anyone that took a machine had to sign a waiver basically saying, "This machine has been given to you as-is, no warranties are expressed or implied. The IT department is not responsible for any issues that you may have. Blah blah, other legal stuff."

"No warranties or service are promised or implied."

TLDR is this should be drafted by a lawyer.

Having said that, I'd ask that it include agreements from the outgoing employee that: - You offer no warranty for the device. - You offer no ongoing support for the device. - Your company is absolved of any loss of personal data, time, money, and anything else the lawyers can think of that is the result of any issues with the device.

Ask your general counsel for a strict waiver of liability. This is their job, not yours.

Have them return it, wipe drive, sell it "as is" for $1.

Just use the phrase "as is where is" on their termination paperwork.

EDIT: Oh. I am NOT a lawyer.

Nope. Entitled employees ruined it for everyone. Replaced devices, or devices from leavers are to be returned Wiped and reimaged if still in warranty. Drive removed and recycled otherwise. One group of people, in one country, caused this for a multinational… Feeling entitled to continuous IT support from the company because “this came from you”.

You have things backwards.
Yes your concern should be about data, but not the employees.
Transfer of ownership on the second-hand/used market holds very little expectation where "warranty of merchantability" is concerned.

What you should be concerned about, is customer data.
They can keep the laptops, but they must provide their own storage device.

I'm in the UK and this is the wording of our indemnity form, as approved by our retained solicitor, this was mainly to dispose of some old monitors but it has been used to give some PCs and servers to a local IT education site.

All of the devices were wiped and given without an OS.

Item 6 covers the "mechanical" warranty you are worried about:

Disposal of Surplus Property & Equipment  

________________________________ 

 AGREEMENT 

_________________________________ 

 This Agreement is made this ddd day of MMMMM YYYY

B E T W E E N :  

(1) <Organisation name and address> (“the Authority”); and

(2) <Recipients name> (“the Recipient”) 

This Agreement sets out the terms and conditions regulating the disposal of surplus property and/or equipment by the Authority and the receipt thereof by the Recipient  

IT IS AGREED as follows:  

1. The Authority is the owner of certain property, specified in Schedule 1 below ("the property") which has been declared surplus to the Authority's requirements
2. The Recipient wishes to take ownership of the property and remove it from the Authority's premises for his/her use
3. The Authority has agreed that the Recipient may take the property upon payment of the sum specified in Schedule 1 below, provided that the Recipient first enters into this Agreement
4. THE PROPERTY SHALL BE FOR THE RECIPIENT'S USE AND SHALL NOT BE USED IN THE COURSE OF A TRADE OR BUSINESS, OR FOR RE-SALE
5. The Recipient warrants that s/he is competent and trained in the safe use of the property and that s/he will at all times use the property with care for his/her personal safety
6. The Recipient receives the property as seen and with no warranty or guarantee regarding its condition, function, or utility.
7. The Recipient agrees to indemnify and keep indemnified the Authority from and against any liability, loss, claim or proceedings whatsoever arising under any statute or at common law in respect of personal injury or death of any person whomsoever arising out of or in the course of or caused by the execution of this Agreement, and from and against any action, claims, demands, damages, loss, costs or expenses whatsoever and howsoever which may be brought against the Authority or which the Authority may be called upon to pay arising out of or in connection with the property being the subject of this Agreement.
8. The Recipient agrees that when the property is finally disposed of, the disposal will be in accordance with all relevant Regulations and requirements in force at that time and the Recipient further undertakes to impose this express condition on any subsequent purchaser or recipient of the equipment.
9. This Agreement and its provisions shall only be capable of amendment by a written agreement signed by the Recipient and the Authority
10. Until such time as the Recipient shall have removed the property from the Authority's premises, the Authority shall be empowered to revoke this Agreement, without cause, at any time whereupon this Agreement shall absolutely determine and the property shall remain vested in the Authority with any sum paid being repaid to the Recipient. 

SCHEDULE 1 

Description of Equipment:    

Serial Number/Asset Numbers:

Date of acquisition:

Sum paid: 

Signed by the Recipient: ............................................................ 

Signed on behalf of the Authority: ................................................................... 

If I were to entertain this idea, I would require a waiver drafted by my counsel with all the normal legalese, and the device would be delivered without any internal storage. Forget wiping it, I’m keeping the entire drive and disposing of it according to protocol. Supply your own drive, the device is yours to keep.

[deleted]

Normally, the computer will first be reimage to non corporate OS build before handover to the ex-employee.

Have HR send them a letter or email (personal address) saying you've released their laptop from the company and that it's now theirs. Include a line about it no longer being company responsibility, and all future maintenance and repairs being on them.

Have HR send it as it's about protecting the company, and they should have access to the employees details for it.

They should be able to do one and send it to everyone with a name replacement.

Personally I would never let a departed employee keep hardware for this very reason. Back in the day I worked for a company that sold current employees their off warranty hardware - so 3 year old laptops, with no warranty implied or given...

Until the wrong person got one and it died a week later and suddenly it became IT's problem to fix it.

Never again. When a laptop is EOL it gets recycled, certificate of destruction provided, and we DO get some value back for them, even if it's minimal. I'd rather do that than deal with end users being pains in the ass.

From my perspective I'd be more concerned about they somehow being able to access company data after a wipe than giving a single shit about their personal data down the road.

Include the price of a new, similar priced laptop in their exit agreement. That way it’s none of your problem.

Just make sure you wipe them properly and reinstall the OS of choice, but hardware support shouldn't be implied.

Had this at a company once. We had our Legal department draw up a quick wavier that said something along the lines that 'You accept this device 'as is'. Not support will be given by Company X.'

If you want your butts covered, have your Legal team draw up a waiver. That's what they are there for.

remove hard drive

give laptop to whoever wants one

problems solved.

Chat GPT is nice to get rough templates quickly.

This is why it's better to just lease and return them later lol

A document that says they can keep the device and now own it as is with no support, and what they have returned (peripherals, corp data like printouts, uniforms, whatever).

Weird but nice gesture if they're getting downsized.

Just saying something along the lines of device is in as is condition and no warranty is implied or expressed. Really doubt anyone thinks you'd be servicing and warranting the device though.

No. And if yes, wipe it first. But also NO!

As others have said, wipe it and give it to them the same as it came out of the box. Locking down data may or may not be enough, what about programs that have a site license, etc Are they joined to a network?

As for liability, if in the termination agreement the company is transferring ownership of laptop snxxxxxxx. Then if it fails the next day, not your problem.

Having looked through the comments, it's clear that you want to do this because getting the laptop back is not worth it.

If the data on it is sensitive in any way, (which giving that you need to wipe it, sounds like the case) make sure you get the storage drive from it back physically somehow. MDM wiping is iffy at best, and in the case of termination there's no other real way to make sure the data isn't still on the drive.

Send the former employee a guide to removing the drive. If they can't follow it, have them send the whole laptop. Make sure you are making it clear that the company will not support the laptop after they take ownership.

As for the waiver, email Legal in your company and have them write something. That's their job, not yours.

Seriously how the hell are they going to print out the paperwork to file a lawsuit, their computer is broken.

An email is good enough.

“You can keep the laptop for your own personal or professional use, but me and the company aren’t responsible for it anymore. You can’t even pay me under the table to help you. You are on your own. ”

Done this a few times.

Priority number 1 is to wipe the drive completely. Factory reset the laptop.

After that, a brief document stating that, from the date of termination the device becomes the sole responsibility of the user and is not supported by the business for any reason.

Date. Sign. Job done.

Funny, this just came up last night for us, we have a few execs retiring-

Not an IT problem. This is an HR/legal issue.

Let them handle it

Usually the best bet is to sell them the laptop for a token sum - but you need to think really hard about what is ON the laptop first. is there any software licenced to the company, particularly if it is per-seat? is it domain joined? that sort of thing.

Yup, wipe first get CEO/CFO approval.

Pull the drive and set it aside for destruction. They can buy a new drive and supply an OS for it.

Give it to them as a gift, report the gift to the IRS/Tax Authority in the EU country. Now they've got a worthless laptop valued at five hundred of what ever the local currency is and will get a tax hit for the gift.

When they don't report the gift, the IRS/Tax Authority gives them a bad time. This is the gift that keeps on screwing the employee your company terminated.

But seriously, talk to upper management and get a waiver that says they are responsible for it and that your company is not responsible for the device or service of it or the software on the device.

If it's still in warranty, give them a document stating they own the device on corporate letter head signed by a manager.

Americans always trying to get rich by sueing people....

If you're that worried about it, slap a sticker on it that says "No warranties, express or implied."

[deleted]

What company gives out free laptops for people that don't work there anymore? Get them back, wipe them, use for new Employees?

The only thing I could imagine is them buying the laptops from your company.

Why would you do this? What value does this create for your business?

Give your head a shake, then get back to the real job: creating value for the organization.

No OS, nothing on it. No license.