The last few weeks have been quite busy for me, juggling tight deadlines at work with the stresses and struggles of buying my first apartment...
Well, the work deadlines and the apartment are sorted now, but I couldn’t have done it without the flexibility my employer offered me during this period.
This flexibility I am referring to is working from home... and I truly believe that you will not fully appreciate the benefits until you need to work from home yourself. I was able to save the travel time to work, sort out what I needed to do with regard to the apartment and complete the projects required at work by the deadlines.
Working from home not only benefits the Employee, it also benefits the Employer.
Some of the commonly reported benefits of having a Home-Based Agent programme include:
- Access to a wider resource pool that you would not usually access (e.g. work from home parents, regional/rural communities)
- Improved staff morale and retention
- Improved productivity of staff
- Improved service response to customer needs
- Reduced travelling times for employees
- Improved work-life balance
With so many benefits and proven cases of the concept working across the world, it puzzles me as to why only one in ten contact centres in Asia allow agents to work from home.
Western countries such as the US and Australia have higher adoption rates of Home-Based Agent programmes and this looks set to continue to grow and attract increasing support from senior executives in 2012.
With the relevant OH&S and Security measures, working from home makes logical sense and should be the direction that the contact centre industry in Asia head towards.
