Homeshoring Brings Work At Home For Disabled Persons

In times when it is difficult to find secure employment, it is doubly difficult for physically disabled persons. Legislation aimed at bringing equality had the effect that employers found new ways to discriminate. Outsourcing was one of them but "homeshoring" jobs are now redressing the balance.

Homeshoring is a new phenomena which is spreading rapidly throughout the United States of America. At a time when employment is hard to find, Homeshoring offers hope for many people who would not have a hope of securing a job otherwise. Finding decent paid employment is a challenge for everyone but, if you happen to be physically disabled, the challenge is multiplied.

Of course there is legislation to protect disable people and to ensure that they get equal opportunities in every situation, particularly as to finding employment. Laws, however, don't always help the individuals they are supposed to protect. Instead of spending money to adapt their premises to be suitable for disabled employees, many employers decided to outsource jobs. The jobs most easily outsourced are customer service jobs and other phone-related roles, including technical phone support. These are the jobs which are now becoming available due to homeshoring.

For several years, the trend was for employers to outsource jobs which would otherwise have been performed by American citizens. These jobs were "offshored", mainly to Asian countries, where wages are much lower than in the United States. The employers saved money all round: they did not have to pay out to have their premises brought up to the standards required by legislation, they saved on insurances, power, and all the costs of maintaining a building. On top of all those savings, they only had to pay the overseas employees a fraction of the wages they would have needed to pay staff even at minimum wage in the United States.

This sounds like a win-win situation for employers but it didn't last. Customers were frustrated and annoyed with having to deal with overseas call center agents because of the language barrier. Even though the agents might understand English, their strong accents meant that customers simply could not understand what was being said to them. Customers exercised their right to vote with their feet and share prices fell in line with customer satisfaction. It took a while but eventually greedy bosses found themselves losing money because of the problems caused by offshoring customer service jobs.

Homeshoring was born through shareholder pressure on the companies involved. They were forced to do something to replace of the completely unsatisfactory outsourcing to foreign call centers. Thanks to the Internet, homeshoring is available. This means that the companies can still enjoy the savings related to the cost of running a physical call center to house employees. At the same time, homeshoring has opened up opportunities to the people who need them the most: physically disabled people, single parents, students, pensioners. Employers will undoubtedly still look for ways to avoid paying to have their premises adapted to accommodate wheelchair access for employees but those employees now have the opportunity to work from the comfort of their own homes and get paid a proper rate thanks to homeshoring.

Make Money Working At Home
Virtual call center work at home
  By Elaine Currie
Published: 12/21/2007