In the modern business landscape, the transition towards hybrid and remote work environments has been both swift and unprecedented. This shift, significantly amplified by the global COVID-19 pandemic, offers various advantages to companies and employees alike. However, along with these merits come unique complexities. Chief among them is maintaining software licence compliance, especially when your workforce is dispersed across myriad locations. In this expansive analysis, we’ll dissect the intricacies of software licence compliance within the remote work paradigm, shedding light on potential pitfalls and proffering solutions tailored to modern businesses.

IBM failed to properly cover work-from-home expenses incurred by employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, a state appellate court ruled, potentially creating a legal pathway for similar action against other companies.

The 3-0 ruling Tuesday by the California 1st District Court of Appeal overturns a lower court decision in a class-action lawsuit involving thousands of IBM employees.

“We always thought the trial judge got it wrong, and now the court of appeals has confirmed our belief that the stay-at-home orders do not insulate IBM from having to comply with the labor code,” Craig Ackermann, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, wrote in an email.

Attorneys representing IBM did not respond to a request for comment. IBM could challenge the ruling by petitioning the case to the California Supreme Court.

The lawsuit, filed by former IBM employee Paul Thai and others, came after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home public health order in March 2020, which shuttered most work sites. Thai used personal funds to complete his job while working from home, according to the lawsuit.

“To accomplish his duties, he required, among other things, internet access, telephone service, a telephone headset, and a computer and accessories,” judges wrote in their decision.

The complaint, originally filed in December 2020, cited a provision of state labor code that requires employers to reimburse workers for expenses “incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties.”

The complaint, which was amended in 2021, went to trial in March 2022. The next month, a judge ruled in favor of IBM, which had argued that the government’s public health order was the sole reason for the company’s work-from-home requirements, so it should not be responsible for the expenses.

The appellate court disagreed, however.

“It may be true that the Governor’s March 2020 order was the ‘but-for’ cause of certain work-from-home expenses, but nothing in the statutory language can be read to exempt such expenses from the reimbursement obligation,” judges wrote.

IBM is among dozens of companies that have been sued for work-from-home reimbursements, along with the likes of Oracle and Bank of America.

IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, says employees’ careers could suffer if they work from home. 

Krishna told Bloomberg during a Monday interview that although he wasn’t forcing his own staffers back to the office, he thought remote workers may struggle to get promotions. 

Tech industry leaders appear to be less enthusiastic about remote working than they once were, but switching tack could backfire and risk infuriating workers, as Insider’s Hasan Chowdhury reported.

Krishna told Bloomberg in the Monday interview: “In the short term you probably can be equally productive, but your career does suffer. Moving from there to another role is probably less likely because nobody’s observing them in another context,” he said. “It will be tougher. Not impossible, but probably a lot tougher.”

He added that remote workers don’t learn skills normally acquired in person, such as dealing with difficult clients, Bloomberg reported. 

Krishna has been IBM’s CEO since 2020 and has encouraged workers to return to the office for three days a week. Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM’s HR chief, told Insider in 2021 that most employees would return to the office part-time after the pandemic.

Most of IBM’s workers are co-located near one of the company’s offices or clients and often collaborate in person, the company said.

Krishna’s comments follow IBM’s recent announcement that it planned to slow or suspend hiring for back-office roles that AI could replace. A spokesperson previously told Insider that there was no blanket hiring “pause” and the company was being deliberate and thoughtful in its hiring.

By Libby Bagley, Community Manager at License Dashboard

When most business leaders began planning for lockdown and a shift to remote working, the potential challenges they were preparing for centred around the operational difficulties of being able to collaborate from a distance. There may have been changes to processes and policies, staff training on new tools, as well as plans on overcoming financial obstacles as a result of the pandemic.

However, there was less consideration for the impact of remote working on cybersecurity. For all the benefits of allowing staff to work from home, both in terms of productivity and work/life balance, it inevitably leaves a business more open to security threats.

The average office setup is very different to the home environment of most employees, with relaxed admin rights of the latter allowing staff to easily and quickly download free trials of products that might pose a danger. Having teams working remotely also means you won’t all be on the same centralised system for updating anti-virus software.

On top of this, as the move to the cloud increases – especially when we consider the reliance on tools like Microsoft 365 – the very nature of having employees accessing files and software from multiple locations, networks and devices, is a risk to corporate information such as financial stats or customer data.

The upsurge in unlicensed software usage is attributed to the rise of remote work and megastructure project development, according to BSA | The Software Alliance, a global software advocate, and the police’s Economic Crime Suppression Division (ECD).

In the first half of this year, losses from the use of unlicensed software amounted to 212 million baht, a rise from 195 million in the same period a year earlier, the ECD said in a press briefing.

This year, BSA will focus more on engineering and design firms under the Legalise and Protect initiative, aimed at promoting the use of licensed software among enterprises, following the rise of megaprojects worth billions of dollars across Southeast Asia, including Thailand, said Tarun Sawney, senior director of BSA | The Software Alliance.

Thailand is developing the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) scheme worth 620 billion baht, including 10 billion baht budgeted for investment this year, with projects including a high-speed train project linking airports and the U-tapao airport upgrade.

Working with software company Autodesk, BSA plans to conduct outreach to 20,000 engineering and design firms across Asean for a campaign calling on the companies to commit to using only licensed software.

This covers 5,000 firms each in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.

The prime targets are engineering and design firms and there are also other companies on the list, including manufacturing firms and animation studios, Mr Sawney said.

This campaign follows BSA’s Legalise and Protect initiative, which was launched in 2019 and has helped businesses in Asean to install licensed software on 1 million PCs.

The use of unlicensed software makes companies vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches, Mr Sawney said.

“We are in the cyber risk time when cyberattacks scale up in line with the rise of digital transformation and remote work,” said Mr Sawney.

Pol Col Kreangsak Chitsaard, superintendent of inquiry of the ECD, said police received 197 complaints over the use of unlicensed software in the first half of 2021, compared with 183 in the same period last year.

He said there is a rise of unlicensed software usage particularly by key business sectors, which makes them vulnerable to cyber risks.

The use of unlicensed software by employees at home also makes their firms violate the copyrights law, he said.

According to him, the number of computers found to have been installed with unlicensed software surged to 9,694 in the first half of the year.