UK Contact centres missing out on talented home-based workforce

The UK contact centre industry is failing to take advantage of a skilled pool of talent by not doing more to enable disabled, older people, parents and other mobility-restricted workers to work from home, according to Exony, supplier of interaction management software to the contact centre industry. Virtual Contact Centres (VCCs) would provide employment for those who cannot move far from their home due to illness or movement-restricting responsibilities, such as home carers, as well as providing contact centres with a new source of skilled workers. These workers are often experienced, have excellent customer service skills and are keen to get back into the workforce.

Currently, there are an estimated 112,000 home-based agents in the US, some 3.7 per cent of the contact centre workforce, a figure that is predicted to rise to 330,000 by 2010 (source:IDC). With the UK contact centre workforce nearing one million, the percentage of UK workers operating from a home office is much lower than in the US. In the UK, Exony estimates that only around 2,000 contact centre personnel are permitted to work remotely.

Home-based employees present a potentially massive talent pool that remains largely untapped by UK contact centres, Exony CEO Ian Ashby said. Combining technologies such as broadband, enabling employees to both handle calls and connect securely with the corporate network, with tools to measure and manage agent and call performance in real-time, allows contact centres to reap the benefits of homeshoring. Breaking down these perception barriers is the first step towards more effective contact centre operations. It is time the UK woke up to the benefits and caught up with the US so that home-based workers can use their skills beneficially.

According to Ashby, increased working from home could also save the UK contact centre industry up to 5 per employee per hour[1], along with environmental and human resource benefits.

To coincide with Work Wise Week (16-22 May, www.workwiseuk.org and National Work From Home Day on 18 May), Exony has launched a new white paper to enable contact centre managers to benefit from the growing trend of homeshoring. Homeshoring occurs when contact centres equip staff with appropriate communications facilities to be able to work from home rather than one central office.

Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK, said: Businesses in the UK will have no option but to introduce smarter working practices, of which home working is one example, if they are going to be able to recruit and retain the staff they need in the future, and increase productivity and competitiveness to be able to meet the challenges emerging from economies such as India and China.

Changing working practices and working smarter will not only increase business productivity and competitiveness, but also reduce transport congestion and pollution, improve health, assist disadvantaged groups, and harmonise our work and family commitments.

In its white paper, available for free download from http://www.exony.com, Exony outlines the core benefits to contact centres of homeshoring:

- Improved opportunity: Disabled workers, older people or new parents, who would find commuting difficult or impossible, are now able to do worthwhile work

- Improved agent quality: US experience suggests that homeshoring enables contact centre operators to tap in to a new, experienced labour pool

- Reduced overheads: Employing home-based workers reduces typical office costs such as space, furniture, heating, lighting and parking. Analysts at Gartner Dataquest estimate that staff costs equate to 70 per cent of contact centre overheads

- Increased staff morale: Attrition is a real issue in the industry, currently running at 22 per cent (source:ContactBabel). This has an exhaustive effect on companies, especially given high training costs

- Green benefits: Reduced commuting and energy costs leads to a lower carbon footprint. Exony estimates that the four million contact centre agents currently working in UK, US and Canada produce more than six million tones of CO each year[2].

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[1] Analyst group IDC estimates that US contact centre workers cost US$31 an hour, including overheads and training, compared to just US$21 for home-based workers. The current exchange rate for this US$10 is 4.99.

[2] Four million workers, assuming a one-way commute of 10 miles in a family car with engine size less than 1.8L (source: ContactBabel and carbonfoortprint.com)