Call history

Of course, it has been the next big thing for some time. The AA, for instance, was piloting home-based contact agents ten years ago (and now has about 20 per cent of them working this way). “Homeshoring is really just a new name for something that’s been around for quite a while,” says Andy Lake, editor at online journal Flexibility. “Some companies have been doing this for years.”

There are a number of reasons it is now ready for greater take-up, however. The first is that it is more technologically feasible – mostly due to more widely available, cheaper and faster broadband connections. Second, it enables companies to access a wider pool of workers, at a time when the industry is struggling to find and retain staff.

Since there are no commuting times to worry about, workers can do shifts of as little as half an hour, enabling those with childcare or other responsibilities to work. Such workers have also proved to be more loyal – slashing churn rates. Furthermore, many of these people are the very staff companies are looking for, as there is increasing pressure to find older and more experienced staff, while still keeping costs down.

“Offshoring has meant everyone has managed to get costs down now, but the world’s changed; now customers want better service,” explains Nick Gregory, vice president of marketing at virtual contact centre solutions provider Exony. “Companies are looking at how they can get a better experience for customers as well as getting the value they want from a contact centre. That’s the big switch.”

By slashing office overheads and providing access to a different type of worker, it is hoped homeshoring is a big part of the answer. IDC reckons that, taking account of overheads and training, homeshoring cuts £5 from the £15.50 hourly cost of every agent.

For charities, this should make it an attractive choice, argues Peter James, associate director of the technology for sustainable development research group SustainIT. “For those that are trying to maintain a national presence with a limited resource base, it can make a lot of sense,” he argues. “It allows you to have staff in different regions without the overheads of an office.”

This is all the more persuasive if you’re relying on volunteers to run your contact centre, as the other AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, does. In the major cities such as London, it runs offices where volunteers man the helplines. In the regions, though, callers to that same central number are automatically routed to the homes of volunteers covering the local area (BT’s software detects where callers are dialling from, provided they call from a landline). Local groups of volunteers are left to organise how they cover the shifts between them.

“It’s about spreading the workload,” explains Ivan Wells, a member of the charity’s Telephone Sub committee. “If people had to come into an office, that would preclude a lot of them from being able to do it.”

Despite the attractions, though, charities are lagging behind even the private and public sectors in the UK in adopting homeshoring on a significant scale. As Ian Ashby, managing director at virtual contact centre software provider IRIS, puts it: “I think charities are embracing homeworking, but industry in general is planning for homeshoring.”

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Holding on

There are some good reasons for this reticence, though. There are, for instance, significant challenges to managing a home workforce – for line managers it can mean frequent travelling for one-to-one meetings, for example; it can also be difficult for workers to adjust to the social isolation, and some won’t have suitable homes; and there can be security concerns if the role necessarily involves allowing workers to access sensitive information on the organisation’s servers.

Furthermore, there is also a question of scale. When it comes to homeshoring contact centres (the most common use for the term), Ashby says it can be a realistic solution with as few as ten workers, but he adds it’s really a case of “the bigger, the better”.

But, as he points out, it’s not just in their internal operations that charities could make use of homeshoring: there is a real opportunity for many to tap into recruitment opportunities for their beneficiaries.

After all, says Ashby, one of the key advantages of homeshoring (and one that makes it attractive in public relations as well as commercial terms) is its ability to engage those who are traditionally excluded from the labour market: carers, single parents, disabled people, the socially excluded – “the very constituencies, in other words, that charities work with on a daily basis”.

There is already some evidence of what could be achieved (see case study), but to date, charities have been slow to initiate such partnerships. However, if homeshoring really does take off in the private and public sectors, this could be where it has the most significant impact for charities, provided, of course, that they want to take that opportunity. At the end of the day, it’s their call.

Case in point

Broxtowe in Nottingham is one of the most disadvantaged areas in the UK. A red-brick council estate, it has 5,000 residents, many of whom haven’t worked for years, including a significant number of middle aged female residents living in their own homes.

Last Spring, the Greater Nottingham Partnership, an arm of the East Midlands Regional Development Agency, worked with specialist firm UK Virtual Call Centres to develop a locally-based homeshoring operation involving 12 of the residents.

These workers would handle the calls under a contract the firm secured with Boots to cover its peak season between July and January. Usually this period is covered by temporary staff at its main Nottingham offices.

Following training, the residents were provided with a dedicated broadband line and a secure PC in a suitable room in their home. They were then able to work four to five hour shifts for an average of 100 hours a month.

According to Peter Goodwin, chief executive of Accelerate Nottingham, which promotes the benefits of ICT to the local area, the results were impressive: the workers, who previously had no experience of the field, fulfilled all the terms of the contract; Boots stated it would use the model for seasonal peaks in future; and four of the residents secured permanent jobs with the company – and all at almost no cost to the development agency.

The only reservation Goodwin sees is that projects would be too exposed to the seasonal demands of the private sector: one reason he would like to see greater use of similar projects by the public sector. However, he remains convinced of the idea’s promise.

As he puts it: “I’ve been doing regeneration now for 30 years, and it’s the best end result I’ve seen.”

Green connections

For those with an environmental focus, homeshoring is particularly attractive, and indeed many reckon that private sector growth will end up being driven by regulatory pressure on companies to cut their carbon emissions.

“There’s going to be increasing pressure for organisations to reduce commuting,” explains Gregory, “and when people look at their company they’ll see they have 1,000 people sat at a contact centre who they can make work at home with one pen stroke.”

Even if this won’t be an option for most charities, it shows what is possible with modern technology, and environment groups such as Forum for the Future have long argued that all organisations could make greater use of teleworking.

The charity itself has about 80 staff and 60 to 70 of these telework at least some of the time, some for the majority of it. One of its employees even works occasionally from another charity’s offices in Cardiff so that he can continue to live in Wales. The charity also uses hotdesking and video conferencing.

“I’m sure this is going to become much more widespread,” says Forum for the Future’s IT and administration manager, John Bishop.

There are limits, though. As another charity concerned with the environment, ACRE (Action with Communities in Rural England) is also keen on teleworking. If nothing else, says chief executive Silvia Brown its policy of allowing teleworking enables it to recruit staff from outside Cirencester, where it’s based.

However, she too has reservations. First, the technology is not always as good as it’s cracked up to be – particularly in terms of broadband availability and reliability. “People in London don’t know how lucky they are,” she remarks.

More importantly, though, the charity has found there is a limit to the amount people can work at home. “You’ll always need that face-to-face bonding needed for good teamwork,” argues Brown. “We all might be able to go considerably further down the homeworking route than we are now, but you’ll never be able to crack that.”

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