What to Do With Company Phones and Laptops When Staff Leave

The real risk: a device only the ex-employee can unlock

Company phones often end up with personal accounts on them. Staff sign in with their own Apple ID to use iMessage, or add a personal Google account to a work Android. That is normal. The problem comes when they leave without signing out.

Apple's Activation Lock and Google's Factory Reset Protection are built to stop stolen phones being reused. They don't know the difference between a thief and your IT team. If the personal account is still attached, the device can't be set up for someone else, and no buyer will accept it. We treat iCloud-locked devices as an absolute no, and Android phones stuck on FRP can't be bought either.

The window to fix this is short: while the employee is still in the office and still has their passwords.

The last-day routine (15 minutes per person)

Do this with the employee present, not after they leave:

1. Collect every device. Phone, laptop, tablet, and any chargers or docks issued to them. Match against your asset list by serial number, not just model.
2. Save company data. Move work files to shared storage, export anything needed for handover, and confirm email and chat archives are kept under your company account.
3. Remove personal accounts. On iPhone and iPad: sign out of Apple ID and turn off Find My. On Mac: sign out of Apple ID and remove any firmware password they set. On Android: remove the Google account and any brand account (Samsung, Mi, HeyTap, Huawei ID). On Windows laptops: remove their personal Microsoft account and get the BitLocker recovery key if drive encryption is on.
4. Check it worked. Open Settings and confirm no personal account remains. On iPhone, Find My must show as off.
5. Record the handover. Note the date, device serials, condition and who received them. A photo of each device takes seconds and settles later disputes about scratches or missing chargers.

Then decide: reassign, store or sell

Once the device is clean, it goes one of three ways.

• Reassign if it is recent, in good condition and a new hire needs one soon. Reset it, re-enrol it in your MDM, and hand it out.
• Store briefly only if there is a named use for it in the next few weeks. A spare device with no plan loses value every month in a drawer.
• Sell if it is older, not needed, or part of a batch of returned devices. Phones and laptops lose resale value steadily, and a new model launch pushes older ones down again.

Companies with a steady trickle of leavers often find a cupboard of returned devices that nobody owns. Batching them every quarter and selling through a corporate buyback turns that cupboard into cash instead of e-waste.

Before selling: release management and reset

If your company uses MDM (Apple Business Manager, Intune, Google Workspace or similar), release each device from management before it leaves your hands. MDM-locked devices are not accepted. After release:

1. Confirm no personal or company accounts remain signed in.
2. Factory reset the device to its setup screen.
3. Remove SIM cards and memory cards.
4. Keep chargers and boxes together with the device if you still have them.

We do a thorough factory reset on every device we buy. We don't provide certified data destruction or certificates, so if your data policy requires that, arrange it before handover. Our IT asset disposal page covers what we do and don't handle.

Put it in the offboarding checklist

Most companies already have an exit checklist for access cards, email and payroll. Add three lines:

• All issued devices returned and matched to serial numbers
• Personal Apple ID, Google and Microsoft accounts removed, checked by IT
• Device marked for reassign, store (with a date) or sell

That small change prevents the most expensive outcome: a working device that nobody can use and nobody will buy.