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TELECOMMUNICATIONS
HOW REAL IS THE FUTURE OF A
WORKING FROM HOME MODEL
FOR GOVERNMENT CONTACT
CENTRE AGENTS?
By Fiona Keough, CEO ATA
According to the Australian Communications
and Media Authority (ACMA), 51% of Australians
are ‘digital workers’ who use the internet away
from the office. Yet formalised teleworking in
Australia is still limited with government lagging
behind private enterprise. While employers and
workplaces might remain static and brick-bound,
for the modern and mobile workforce, mindsets
are shifting to the concept that “work is what you
do not where you go!”
In ‘Telework and Business Use of Information
Technology in Australia 2011-12’ – the latest
issue of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS)
Business Use of Information Technology (BUIT)
survey – the figures indicate that more than a
third of micro businesses now use the internet to
enable staff to work from home, which represents
an 8% increase in two years, while for larger
businesses, more than 75% now have the facility
for staff to use the internet to work from home.
The figures look different when we narrow
our focus to the contact centre industry, and
particularly for the government sector. According
to the ATA’s research partner Fifth Quadrant, 9%
of contact centres in Australia employ homebased agents and this figure is expected to
increase to 18% over the next 12 months. Within
these centres, on average one in 10 agents
work remotely (11%). For the government sector
however, this numbers falls to only 4% and it
is not expected to rise at all, but remain static.
[Fifth Quadrant Contact Centre Human Resources
Report 2013]
In another survey by Bearing Point [2011 Australian
Contact Centre Survey], this also showed a picture
of Contact Centre teleworking trends, with almost
19% of centres including a work-at-home (WaH)
model, with an additional 23% of centres planning
to move towards WaH solutions.
Whatever survey you look at, the burgeoning
growth in ‘at home’ agents and virtual centres
across the private sector contact centre
community is already well underway and
continues to gain momentum and favour. And it
doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why
when you look at the benefits.
Govlink Issue 2 2013
For employees the advantages are many –
greater work/life balance, increased productivity,
improved morale, equal employment
opportunities and reduced stress to name
but a few. However, the advantages for the
employer are equally as strong such as greater
productivity, reduced absenteeism, and attrition,
reduced office space costs and greater ROI,
greater employment opportunities for people
with disabilities and greater access to a pool
of talented professionals when work location
becomes irrelevant to employment.
So why does government lag behind? Why such
a disparity between government and private
operators? And most alarmingly, what will the
future predictions of an ever-widening gap mean
for government centres, particularly in terms of
recruitment, talent acquisition and retention?
The technology entry point has always been the
initial barrier to serious work-at-home solutions
gaining traction, however given the already
high investment in technology solutions in
these government assets, in conjunction with
the 2/47 and evolving online nature of customer
interactions – particularly those already moving
to cloud, virtual and multichannel service models
– progressing to a work-at-home model seems a
logical direction for government contact centres
to consider.
In 2011 former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, as
part of the National Digital Economy Strategy
goals, announced that one of those goals was
having 12% of Australian workers regularly
teleworking by 2020. Being one of the nation’s
largest employers, government is not exempt
from the target and certainly with the NBN the
expectations and hopes for boosting teleworking
are high.
In the US, the work at home market is gaining
even greater ground and sophistication.
According to the US GSA 2011 Federal Contact
Centre Survey, 29% of government contact
centres were using at-home agents, and of
those that do, four out of 10 use at-home
agents for >75% of their workforce. Some of
the major benefits of this approach were the
ability to recruit, unencumbered by geographic