A bit of info on "Home-Shoring"..

I just did some very quick, down 'n' dirty research on "HomeShoring", and thought some of you might be interested.

1) Your costs: Some companies require you pay for a background check ($30)

2) You must have Hi-Speed Internet. (Broadband/Cable.. No DialUp allowed).

3) You will need a dedicated phone line. (No cell phones or wireless allowed)

4) You WILL NOT have insurance. (In most cases, though I saw one company that mentioned employee benifits. Just didn't look into it.)

I looked at 4 different companies, and found that most will require that you agree to 20-30 hours per week. In most cases, you can pick the times you work.

Pay appears to be pretty good for work-at-home, running $15-$20 an hour. (That's more than I make on my J.O.B.)

These "Home-Shore" jobs consist of customer support services via phone & Internet, and you'll need to be able to be talking on the phone and working on the computer at the same time.

If it sounds good, go for it. :)

Pete

> Hi Jodie,

> Here is an article from page 76 in the January 23, 2006 issue of
> BusinessWeek magazine. It gives some names of companies that provide
> real jobs for work at home.

> Paul Bergman

> Call Centers In The Rec Room
> "Homeshoring" takes off as moms and others provide an
> alternative to offshoring

> Three years ago, when the offshoring debate was in full fury, the director
> of vendor relations at 1-800-FLOWERS.com ran a pilot project to see if the
> company should be taking advantage of the new labor arbitrage. Within
> weeks,
> the trial in India bombed. For the executive in charge, Lou Orsi, it was a
> reminder that customer service is as much about psychology as technology.
> Florists often double as condolence therapists, interior design coaches,
> and
> relationship strategists. "The folks were difficult to
> understand," says
> Orsi. "We were afraid that we would lose sales, and we couldn't risk
> that."
> The company also needed to pour on the labor during spikes like
> Valentine's
> Day. (When it came to answering customers' e-mails, though, the dazzling
> prose
> of the Indians -- many of them PhDs -- outshone that of the Americans,
> most
> of whom had gone only to high school. So Orsi left some of the e-mail jobs
> overseas).

> The phone work stayed in the U.S. But not just in brick-and-mortar call
> centers. Instead, Orsi looked for another way to cut costs. He soon
> realized
> he could capitalize on a different and far less controversial option:
> sending
> the jobs to a U.S. outfit that specializes in a new trend called
> homeshoring.

> More and more, companies are moving customer service jobs out of
> high-overhead
> call centers and into what is possibly the lowest-overhead place in the
> U.S.:
> workers' homes. The savings are about more than just real estate, toilet
> paper, and coffee supplies. JetBlue Airways () is perhaps the most famous
> practitioner; all of its 1,400 reservation agents work from home. But they
> are employees. Most of the new homeshoring jobs are independent contractor
> positions offered by outsourcing companies. The agents are on the hook for
> their own health care, computer equipment, training -- even background
> checks.

> Outsourced homeshoring jobs grew 20% last year, to 112,000 jobs, estimates
> tech-market researcher IDC, and will hit 330,000 by 2010.
> "Offshoring's
> underestimated sibling, homeshoring, is about to hit a growth spurt,"
> says
> IDC analyst Stephen Loynd. Office Depot (), McKesson (), and J. Crew all
> use
> home agents. Homeshoring is less likely to risk the accent fatigue,
> cultural
> disconnection, and customer rage that offshoring can inspire. That's not
> to
> mention the mounting security fears (once your private data -- credit-card
> and
> Social Security numbers, medical and brokerage records -- go overseas,
> they're
> beyond the reach of U.S. law).

> LOYAL WORKFORCE
> For a fraction of the cost, companies get superior labor. Home workers --
> sometimes called cyberagents -- are being culled from a labor pool that,
> pre-
> broadband, was marooned from Big Business. The biggest group of home
> agents
> are educated, stay-at-home moms who were previously workforce MIAs because
> they lived in rural areas, couldn't afford child care, or were unable to
> contort their lives into mandatory, face-time schedules. More than 75% of
> home
> agents have some college, vs. 20% in call centers. Home-based agents are
> also
> far more experienced and radically more loyal.

> Aside from mothers with young children, virtual call-center providers like
> Alpine Access, LiveOps, Willow, and Working Solutions are hiring other
> members of the hidden labor force: itinerant military spouses, seasoned
> retirees living half the year down South, computer-savvy, disabled
> veterans
> -- even corporate wives looking to go back to work. "I have a
> daughter at NYU.
> That's like $40,000 a year," says LiveOps home agent Adrienne Byrne.
> She
> brings in about $1,200 biweekly working 40 hours a week out of the 4,000-
> square-foot colonial in Brookfield, Conn., that she shares with her
> husband,
> an executive in international finance.

> Homeshoring also provides a flexible, just-in-time workforce. Shifts can
> last
> as little as 15 minutes. Agents are paid only for the time spent on the
> phone
> -- a 21st-century piece-rate system. Technology lets companies monitor
> worker
> performance with the same precision as the machinery on their assembly
> lines.
> While a stateside call-center worker typically costs $31 an hour,
> including
> overhead and training, home agents cost only $21, says IDC. Home agents
> are
> also more productive. Willow CEO Angie Selden says the company's home
> agents
> make sales that are up to 25% higher than in call centers; their customer
> satisfaction rates are often 40% better.

> Another factor powering the trend is the awareness that it can cost up to
> six
> times as much to replace a customer as to keep him, points out Washington
> (D.C.)-based Telework Coalition senior vice-president Jack Heacock. Thus
> offshoring is giving way to a new "multishore" or
> "rightshore" strategy:
> matching consumers to a workforce that best serves them.

> The advantage for employees is an end to days where more time is spent
> commuting in a car than lounging on the living room couch -- or having
> only
> enough for a trip to McDonald's () after job-related expenses are paid.
> "I
> could get a job at the mall, but the $8.50 an hour would all be taken up
> by
> day care and gas," says Crystal Gilot, a military spouse who works
> for Willow
> from her home in Sierra Vista, Ariz., near Fort Huachuca. Her two kids are
> trained like soldiers not to utter a syllable when she's on the phone. She
> says that by taking calls for AAA roadside assistance and Office Depot,
> she
> can earn up to $20.70, with incentives. But she usually averages $15 an
> hour
> -- extra income that will be helpful when Gilot's husband leaves in six
> months
> for his second tour in Iraq.

> Of course, there's a dark side. While home agents earn more than their
> brick-
> and-mortar counterparts (most earn $10 to $15 an hour without benefits vs.
> $7
> to $9 with benefits in a call center), they are also going it alone in the
> workplace jungle. Critics say homeshoring is thrusting more jobs into the
> global discount-labor bazaar.

> In a scenario that's becoming increasingly familiar, Working Solutions
> cyberagent Jacqueline Lesane has a slice of the good life, including her
> own
> Atlanta home with a pool. But she and her husband have no health
> insurance.
> For now, she's willing to make the trade-off: no benefits, but more
> flexibility and control.