Normally, nothing is changing in an upgrade which affects the workstation, so once the .exe and the database have been updated you shouldn't need to run anything on the workstation. I think this may have been necessary on one upgrade in the past where a  a registry update meant that the first timer R6  ran on a  workstation it required Admin permission.  This may also be the case where an upgrade includes a change to an addin. However, we are not in future integrating  addin updates  in a R6 update.

After doing the upgrade, using me as admin, Recorder still works on other peoples machines. However it is still showing as the old version when they log in. Does this mean we will have to run the upgrade for all users after all or is there something else we can do to avoid annoying our ICT department too much.

Is this just a registry setting because for other people it is opening the upgraded version despite the version that is shown. Some things such as the import wizard don't work properly.