Remote Employee Printing Policy: Home Printers and Rules

A remote employee printing policy answers a question most businesses only face when something goes wrong: what may staff print at home, on what equipment, and what happens to the paper afterwards? With hybrid working, client files and payroll reports can end up on a kitchen table or in household recycling. A short, practical policy prevents that without banning useful printing. This guide gives you the decisions and a structure to follow.

Why home printing needs its own rules

Office printing has controls: secure release, locked shredding bins, managed devices. At home, none of those exist by default. The risks are ordinary rather than dramatic:

• confidential pages left on a shared printer or desk;
• whole documents put in household recycling;
• a family printer that stores jobs or has a default password;
• no record of who printed what if a document goes missing.

Data protection guidance, such as the ICO’s guide to data security, expects organisations to protect personal data in paper form as well as digital. NIST SP 800-46 covers the wider security of telework and personal devices.

Decision 1: what may be printed at home

Classify your documents in three groups and give real examples for each:

Group	Examples	Home printing
General	Meeting agendas, published material, drafts with no personal data	Allowed
Confidential	Client contracts, financial reports, HR letters	Office only, or home with conditions
Restricted	Health data, payment card data, ID documents	Not printed, or office secure release only

Businesses in regulated sectors should align this table with their sector rules; see HIPAA compliant printing and GDPR and office printers.

Decision 2: who supplies the printer and pays for supplies

Three common models:

• Company printer: the business supplies and configures a printer, and sends or reimburses supplies. Most control, most cost.
• Reimbursement: staff use their own printer and claim ink, toner and paper up to a limit with receipts.
• Allowance: a fixed amount towards home office costs, including printing.

Tax and employment treatment of equipment and allowances varies by country, so check with your accountant. Whatever you choose, state it clearly, including what happens to a company printer when someone leaves.

Decision 3: handling and disposal rules

Write short, concrete rules:

• Collect pages from the printer immediately.
• Store confidential pages out of sight and away from other household members.
• Carry documents between home and office in a closed bag or folder.
• Shred confidential pages with a cross-cut shredder, or bring them to the office shredding bin.
• Report lost or misplaced documents to a named person the same day.

Decision 4: device rules

If staff print work documents on any home printer:

• Change the printer’s admin password from the default and keep firmware updated.
• Use the home Wi-Fi with a strong password; do not leave Wi-Fi Direct open.
• Turn off cloud or email print features that are not needed.
• Do not keep scans of work documents on the printer’s memory or a personal cloud account.

The NCSC’s device security guidance and our network printer security checklist apply to home devices too, scaled down.

Decision 5: reduce the need to print

The safest home print is the one that never happens. Encourage digital signatures, shared PDF review and on-screen annotation. Our paperless office guide suggests which documents to move first.

A short policy template

You can add this section to your office print policy template:

1. Scope: applies to all staff printing work documents outside the office.
2. What you may print: general documents only; confidential documents only with manager approval; restricted documents never.
3. Equipment: company printer supplied on request, or reimbursement of supplies up to the agreed limit with receipts.
4. Handling: collect at once, store securely, carry in a closed folder.
5. Disposal: cross-cut shred or return to the office for secure disposal.
6. Devices: change default passwords, keep firmware updated, no open Wi-Fi Direct.
7. Incidents: report lost documents to the named contact the same day.
8. Review: policy reviewed yearly.

When someone leaves

Home printing creates loose ends at the end of employment. Add these steps to your leaver checklist:

• return any company printer and unused supplies, or agree in writing that the person keeps them;
• confirm that printed confidential documents have been returned or shredded;
• remove the person from any cloud print or email print service;
• settle outstanding supply claims.

If the person used a personal printer, ask them to delete any stored scans or jobs and remove work email or cloud accounts from it.

Common questions from staff

Can I print a client document at home if I shred it afterwards? Follow the classification table: if the document is confidential, the policy decides whether manager approval is needed.

My printer is out of toner; can I print at a copy shop? Not for confidential documents. Public printers and copy shops may keep jobs or leave pages in trays.

Can I scan documents at home with my phone? Only with an approved app that saves into company storage, not into a personal photo library.

Keep it practical

A policy that bans all home printing is often ignored. One that allows general printing, sets clear limits for confidential material, and pays for reasonable supplies is more likely to be followed. Brief staff in a few minutes, and include the rules in onboarding.

When you next run an office print audit, include home printing costs and claims so the full picture of printing spend is visible.

Budgeting for home printing

Home printing costs are easy to miss because they arrive as expense claims or small purchases rather than as one invoice. If the business supplies printers or pays for supplies, give them their own line in the office printing budget so they can be compared with office printing year on year. Where teams are charged for their printing, decide whether home printing is included in print cost allocation by department; if it is, use the same full cost per page approach and keep the reporting simple. A stable or falling home printing line is also a useful sign that the “reduce the need to print” measures are working.

Summary

A remote employee printing policy needs five decisions: what may be printed at home, who supplies equipment and supplies, how pages are handled and destroyed, what home devices must do, and how to print less. Write them down in a page, add them to your print policy, and review once a year.