Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2010 when teleworking was still emerging and work was sent “by internet or fax”. Remote work became mainstream after 2020, so the claim that it “will change the way we work” now reads as a past prediction.
Many companies are not going through their best moment, and they are afraid to hire someone when they really only need a worker a few days a week. Teleworking is an option that companies are now taking up.
A company may have a temporary build-up of administrative work, especially at the end of the month, when payroll has to be prepared or accounts reconciled with distributors and customers. That’s when they turn to teleworkers, who receive the information by internet or fax and clear the backlog from their own homes.
It isn’t only administrative staff they turn to. Sometimes they hire secretaries or salespeople (telemarketing). When their secretary goes on maternity leave, they forward the calls to a teleworker, who answers them from home. At the end of the day she sends all the information, questions or complaints to the company, or handles them herself, depending on the type of contract and the job she was hired for.
The benefit of this new way of working is mutual. The company hires the teleworker by the hour or by the day, and the teleworker, typically someone who is out of work, gets a way to earn some money while looking for a stable job.
Sometimes a full-time collaboration is agreed in advance, if the person is a homemaker who is looking after her children, has no plans to look for a job and would welcome some extra money.
Large companies, on the other hand, can hire professionals in other countries who are part of the company and on the full-time payroll. In this case, the teleworker becomes a kind of area representative in the country where they operate, without having to move to work for a company that is thousands of kilometers away.
One way or another, teleworking will change the way we work today, with its advantages and drawbacks, of course.
There are already websites that collect offers from companies looking for workers. I’m not going to name them, because I’ve seen that they charge a registration fee before you find work, and since I haven’t personally confirmed how effective, reliable and honest they are, I won’t encourage anyone to sign up and pay a fee.
Further reading
Featured image: Dave Dugdale, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
