Home Working is popular in the US and I believe it is beginning to take off here as well. Is anyone here doing it - or know anyone who is? I would be interested in hearing about the pros and cons.
What I mean by Home Working is not an employee working from home on the odd day. Instead, the HW sets up his/her own business to provide a service to a number of companies. The HW provides his/her own PC, telephone, broadband line etc., and pays for his/her training with the company or companies he/she is providing the service to.
The HW is not therefore an employee of any company. He/she is a one person outsource operation. He/she may be doing outbound account collection calls for one company, inbound customer service calls for another, and so forth.
The HW is paid, typically, per minute spent speaking to customers per hour. Quality monitoring is done remotely by the companies the HW is contracted to and any updates on processes and procedures is done by email.
I know one company in the UK that has contracts with 200 Home Workers and the model is working very successfully. There are no Data Protection issues and the typical HW is, in this company's experience, much more productive than the typical call centre employee.
There are obvious societal advantages in that there is no time spent commuting. It is also ideal, I would think, for physically disabled people who may find it difficult to commute. From the HW's perspective there is the advantage of being one's own boss and being able to contract with different companies.
So, is anyone doing it...or thinking of doing so?
Regards,
Fnergg
What I mean by Home Working is not an employee working from home on the odd day. Instead, the HW sets up his/her own business to provide a service to a number of companies. The HW provides his/her own PC, telephone, broadband line etc., and pays for his/her training with the company or companies he/she is providing the service to.
The HW is not therefore an employee of any company. He/she is a one person outsource operation. He/she may be doing outbound account collection calls for one company, inbound customer service calls for another, and so forth.
The HW is paid, typically, per minute spent speaking to customers per hour. Quality monitoring is done remotely by the companies the HW is contracted to and any updates on processes and procedures is done by email.
I know one company in the UK that has contracts with 200 Home Workers and the model is working very successfully. There are no Data Protection issues and the typical HW is, in this company's experience, much more productive than the typical call centre employee.
There are obvious societal advantages in that there is no time spent commuting. It is also ideal, I would think, for physically disabled people who may find it difficult to commute. From the HW's perspective there is the advantage of being one's own boss and being able to contract with different companies.
So, is anyone doing it...or thinking of doing so?
Regards,
Fnergg