Aptus Improvement Services helps organisations

London-based Aptus Improvement Services is helping organisations achieve the cost and logistical benefits offered by ëhomeshoringí, ëhomesourcingí and ëonshoringí programmes, which offer a practical alternative to offshoring while keeping jobs here in the UK.

ëShoringí or ’sourcing’ involves moving jobs to a more financially attractive location where skilled workers earn lower salaries and facilities cost less. While offshoring ñ i.e. moving jobs to non-native locations such as India, Eastern Europe, and China ñ has recently proved popular with many major companies, homeshoring provides a viable alternative by transferring jobs to cheaper UK locales while simultaneously introducing efficient working practises. Therefore, reasonable UK salaries can be paid while overheads are reduced.

For example, a company can transfer its operations out of a high-cost city locale to a cheaper rural area or move jobs from conventional, physical facilities to lower-cost, home-based operations. Homeshoring gives employers access to home workers who might not otherwise be available, such as disabled people and those with mobility problems. Homeshoring can reduce sickness time and costs, avoid the impact of unforeseen circumstances such as rail strikes and telephone outages, and means the employer does not have to pay the prohibitive UK redundancy costs associated with an offshoring initiative.

In its training and consultation programmes, Aptus-HR addresses the challenges of homeshoring: how to set up and manage a virtual workforce; improve productivity; meet legal requirements; instigate culture change; design facilities for the homeshore employee; manage teams in diverse locations across the UK; introduce systems for work allocation, communication and production; monitor output and implement early warning systems to alert of any pending dips in productivity.

Katherine Lachance, senior vice president of Aptus HR Improvement Services, comments: ìMany organisations have discovered offshoring isnít the panacea they originally imagined. In fact, it can be a never-ending quest for the next cheap labour location with continuous exploration and relocation costs to avoid spiralling local salaries, which usually rise to meet expanded market demand.î

She adds: ìEmployers generally have two major concerns over homeshoring: how can they guarantee cost efficiencies, and how can they ensure quality of work when managers canít stand over people to make sure theyíre productive. In my experience, organisations find that the returns outweigh the perceived complexity of the exercise. Here at Aptus-HR, we help them learn appropriate techniques so offsite employees are properly managed and productivity levels are high.î