Homeshoring Brings Work At Home For Disabled Persons

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Homeshoring Brings Work At Home For Disabled Persons

By Elaine Currie

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/homeshoring-brings-work-at-home-for-

disabled-persons.html

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.