What's the admin expense? Won't it just be another line item in the paycheck? It's only an issue if the employer makes requests that exceed the that budget and get called out.
If it's just a fixed amount refunded to all employees, agreed there's no huge admin expense. If employees have different amounts (depending on their circumstances) that they get refunded, there is a lot of complexity required to set rules around what is acceptable, track receipts for these expenses, and have someone review and approve these.
For example, we used expensify at a previous company, and ignoring the human admin cost, there was a $20 / expense report fee the company had to pay.
This is where a little creative problem solving could come into play. You know, having all those "administrators" actually do their jobs.
One simple way to set this up that minimizes administrative overhead is to estimate a base amount for each remote employee, and automatically reimburse that amount. If the employee's actual expenses exceed the base amount, then and only then do manual processes and $20 expense reports need to be involved.
When I said "for each remote employee," it would probably work best to have the base amount set up individually for each remote worker, based on relevant factors such as cost of electricity and such, when they start working remotely. If the base amount proves to be consistently too low, after a period of say, 6 months, then the employee could file some sort of amendment and have the amount reviewed. If the increased reimbursement based on the amendment request is determined to be reasonable, then just retroactively reimburse the difference to the employee and continue forward with the new base amount. It should also probably be re-reviewed yearly.
That should get it done for every remote employee in the company, with a maximum of around 2 manual interventions per year, rather than an expense report every 2 weeks or anything ridiculous like that.
Simple when someone gets hired they list their internet expenses.
Also isnt this basic admin just the cost of doing business?
I should probably not tell you that in europe its common to be reimbursed for traveling expenses when going to the office. Calculated per commute at 0.19 euro per kilometer. So its unique per employee. No company has gone bankrupt due to administrative weight yet.
> No company has gone bankrupt due to administrative weight yet.
Administrative weight has absolutely been a factor in companies collapsing. That's an absurd statement.
And as a specific example, the company I work at just does a blanket credit for work from home expenses to every employee to avoid the administrative overhead. Yes it's not a huge admin overhead, but it's one more thing a company has to read and understand the rules on (in each state), enact policies / processes for, and have an employee process reimbursements for.
Frankly, as an employee this just feels unnecessary. I'm already comparing the cost of commuting, work clothes, etc when deciding where to work. The "work from home expenses" end up being less than the "work from an office" expenses, so I'm not sure why California finds it necessary for employers to reimburse one but not the other. It's adding extra complexity for fairly limited benefit (something California seems to be great at).
