Privacy · Plain-English answer
A VPN hides your browsing from the office network, but not from an employer-managed device. If your company installed monitoring software or certificates on your laptop, it can see your activity on the device itself, before any VPN encryption happens. On your own device, a VPN does hide your traffic from the work Wi-Fi.
These are two different battles. On the network side, a VPN wins. The office firewall sees only encrypted traffic to one server and cannot list the sites you visit.
On the device side, a VPN cannot help. Employer-managed laptops and phones often carry management profiles, monitoring agents, or corporate certificates. Those operate on the device itself, where they can capture screens, log applications, or inspect traffic before it enters the VPN tunnel. Encrypting the network leg does nothing about software watching the endpoint.
If you use a personal device on work Wi-Fi, a VPN genuinely keeps your browsing private from the network, though the employer can still see that a VPN is in use and may have policies against it. Some corporate networks block VPN connections entirely.
If the device belongs to your employer, assume it can be monitored regardless of any VPN. The reliable approach for personal browsing is simple. Use your own device, ideally on mobile data or through a VPN, and keep personal life off work hardware.
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