Working from home advice needed please

I’ll cut to the quick I’ve been working from home for about 6 months. My employer said I can do so using my own personal laptop running a virtual desktop.

They are now saying we HAVE to download external software on to our personal laptops.

I’m completely against. They have given some people in my department work laptops but have “run out”. What are my rights here?

what software, out of curiosity?

I've got the same deal, but I'd already downloaded it beforehand so I could wfh if i needed to. (It's via Microsoft Remote Desktop)

I now though have had to start installing stuff on my phone, which does grate.

We’re having a manager cull at the moment so laptops will become available but no idea when

WebRTC

I’m a sales person so we have a virtual desktop for our outlook, crm etc etc and our phone system is web based. When I phone out our webased phone system use my personal phone as a vehicle for the call. As a consequence my phone has hundreds of phone numbers on it that shouldn’t be there. So they have advised that we should download WebRTC. However there seems to be an issue regarding can our current phone system work in synergy of WebRTC and record the call?

My company is one these that don’t like to pay for anything, it’s all cobbled together with sticky tape and chewing gum and a lot of hoping it will work

You have rights to a work computer and you don't have to install anything on your personal laptop as employers are responsible for equipment and technology when an employee is working from home.

You could confirm when laptops will be delivered and make the case that you have worked without installing anything for 6 months so you'd rather wait for the work gear to arrive (for privacy reasons).

If they pushback, best advice is to speak to your union.

This^ but the reasons of privacy are on both parties. If the software they want you downloading hold any personable identifiable data at all and your personal machine gets a virus that leaks that information out then I'd be worried about gdpr. As well as your own personal privacy.

speak to your union.

lol

WebRTC is a free....

That's where I stopped reading.

Also, be aware that certain types of software can take over your device. At my workplace we use MS Exchange, and a number of people have their work email account connected to their personal mobile phone. Besides the GDPR issues involved here, one unfortunate member of staffed had their entire mobile phone wiped clean due to somebody clicking the wrong button. In the settings of MS Exchange there is a tool to wipe the device it’s installed on. They hadn’t backed up their phone and they lost everything.

Tell me more?

This is standard fare for my company. It’s free and becomes someone else’s problem

That's the point, if it's free, it's your problem. Open-source means the only support you will get is googling the issue. If they are doing this to counter potential data compromise with info stored on your personal phone, what due diligence is done/reassurances given by the vendor that the same thing or worse won't happen by using this platform? None, is likely the answer. And if the s/w craps out and bricks your machine, again, who is going to be responsible? You guys.

It's a total false economy.

Investing in a proper VOIP platform with actual support will save a load of headaches, and money from potential fines for breaches. You're a sales guy, you know that being productive makes you more profitable. Any good vendor should be able to model the ROI to you. Most will even integrate with your CRM (assuming that's not also built by Bob's Discount CRM Warehouse and installed using punch cards).

What do you sell, out of curiosity.

Parcel delivery

This is standard fare for my company. It’s free and becomes someone else’s problem

Exactly what stevo said. It's free and your company will get [no] support in line with they've [not] paid for.

There's nothing wrong with something being open source - there are plenty of products that offer open (or closed) source software with both free and paid models. Freemium...

Free - you get the software free, you install it yourself, you maintain it yourself
Paid - you get help installing it and maintaining it

The open/closed source is incidental.

Dropbox, Gmail, Spotify, Wordpress, Zapier, Mailchimp, Jira, Trello...

But for a company looking to do this just to cut costs then it's pretty short sighted.
Yep, your software costs drop, but either you employ someone to understand and support it, or you end up with lost time and effort and annoyed staff being asked to be their own tech support.