Homeworking and contact centres – pathway to success

A new specialist best practice guide on Homeworking provides the evidence for successful evaluation and implementation

Beat the weather, lower your costs and reward your employees. While homeworking is not a solution for all contact centres, it has never been so easy to evaluate it as an option.  A new guide from the Professional Planning Forum is packed full of ideas, examples and solutions,  including models for homeworking, business cases, case studies and technical alternatives.

Across all types of business, managers are searching for a formula that combines high employee productivity, schedule flexibility and low absenteeism and attrition. Research conducted in 2007 on behalf of the Equal Opportunities Commission reveals that more than half of people that work from home find they are more productive.

A more recent study carried out by research firm CRF Institute meanwhile shows that allowing employees to undertake homeworking can result in a 40% reduction in absenteeism. Case studies from the Planning Forum demonstrate how contact centre operators that have embarked on homeworking schemes enjoy similarly positive results.

Dave Vernon, Head of Best Practice at the Professional Planning Forum explains “ we know that homeworking can be a great solution for contact centres, but many of our members never get to the point of understanding what needs to be done or being confident to move forward.    We believe that solid, independent material like this guide will be invaluable in helping organisations to assess the value of home working and to adopt it as appropriate. “

The homeworking guide is available free of charge and follow on from the success of the Planning Forum’s annual Best Practice guide. It can be downloaded from http://www.planningforum.co.uk/Default.aspx?tabid=265 or ordered in hard copy from their website www.planningforum.co.uk.