As Credit Crunch bites hard remote working increases

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: As Credit Crunch bites hard remote working increases.

The current economic climate is creating worry for many business owners as well as employees who fear redundancies, yet some companies are successfully finding their way through the squeeze with the use of remote working and home working employment options.

Working from home significantly improves productivity, enabling businesses to be more competitive, and enhances work-life balance for staff, with added health and leisure benefits. The recent emergence of 'virtual jobs' and 'virtual communities' is changing the way companies attract and retain skilled employees.

As recruitment costs and staffing overheads get tougher, forward thinking organisations across the UK are benefiting from outsourcing their office and creative functions as well as using home workers to trial new positions without the commitment of taking on full time employees.

The online recruitment connection service, Remote Employment, is dedicated to flexible jobs working from home, work from home jobs, and home based business and home based franchise opportunities. There are no agency fees as they use the website to match freelancers and home workers to employers.

Smarter working practices revolutionises the way people work and leads to increased business productivity and competitiveness, reduced transport congestion and pollution, improved health, assist disadvantaged groups, and harmonise work and family commitments. All round, flexible working options makes good business practice to both small and large companies.

One such company is Digital Unite, a web service that brings digital literacy to Britain's older people. They work with a network of specialist home based Tutors who teach people in their own homes. Their own staff of four, all working part time, also work from home between Andover, Woking, West Ealing and North West London and a server in Northhampton. Their case study reflects an example of how small businesses working from home are still forging ahead in downtime.

Another great example of a company utilising skilled home workers is Cool Essential, the premier shopping portal. The management at Cool Essential, working out of a small office in London with their technology based in India, were looking to expand on their partner base and originally had some difficulty in deciding to outsource their new sales team or bring them in house. The high cost of overheads and the long-term commitment to an office lease finally persuaded them to go remote.

Cool Essential Directors approached Remote Employment to reach out to parents, particularly women with children who might be interested in working from home. They wanted to draw on the countries talent and experience to offer jobs to Mums working from home across the UK. Now, the team is in training over a three-week period to get their pipeline set up while Cool Essential managers monitor and assess them over the coming months. Once the team is established, they will gather for regular quarterly meetings in a suitable venue with the Cool Essential Management. Using all the mod techie cons to communicate on a daily basis, they are yet another great example of how successful remote and home working can be.

Cool Essential's John Harris said "We were concerned about the process of employing a remote workforce, but Remote Employment helped us through this. They are helpful and their web service was very efficient so we will definitely use them in future." Arise Virtual Solutions, the US leader in outsourced home-based services, or homeshoring, has successfully expanded its global business to the United Kingdom with the launch of its relationship with a leading UK retailer. They are looking for a whopping 250 home workers in the UK, ideally stay-at-home mums or dads, and retired or semi-retired folk.

Arise prides themselves on offering home-based work options and have already created a reputation of quality and value for their clients. With the growing global demand for flexible outsourcing services, many of the recent redundancies will now be able to experience the advantages of a flexible, home-based work model.

Ambassador for home working, Libby Calaby, started Concept CV with the idea of running a home based business from day one, mainly to keep overheads down. This turned out to be the vital ingredient of her business because she found exceptionally talented people across the country who wanted to work from home, whereas if she had an office she would have recruited locally and may not have found as wide a pool of talent.

Libby's staff benefit from a great work life balance, working hours to suit their family or individual commitments. Concept CV has many great stories to tell of how their team find that a job working from home enables them to be far more productive and keeps them motivated. These stories range from a 61 year-old who wanted to top up her income, yet run another business from home, to a National Sales Manager who lost her job due to a partial disability so working flexibly from home was a sought after recruitment criteria. Libby also boasts that her home working team has an Ex Rhodesian, who left the UK as a young man and finally returned home to find it difficult to secure a job because of his age, which is only late 50s.

Many other innovative businesses, such as BT's Workstyle Flexible Working Policy, offer fantastic alternatives to traditional employment and as a result benefit from the huge advantages that flexible and remote working solutions can bring to a company who offers these modern choices.