Bring home the bucks without leaving the house

Megan Hanlon-Akright wanted to get back into the work force. But she didn’t want to go back to commuting to a job.

A flexible schedule was what the 47-year-old Danville, Calif., resident was looking for, something that would let her work at home so she could be around when her 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son returned from school.

To that end, Hanlon-Akright became a home-based customer-service agent. She helps customers of a Chicagobased utility set up or turn off natural gas service in their homes from her home.

“I had a career for 15 to 20 years. And then my children became my career for 10 years when I became a stayat-home mom,” said Hanlon-Akright, who formerly worked in public relations. “Both of my children are in school full time. I wanted to get back to work.”

Many large companies are turning to home-based agents in the United States to do customer service, sales and technical-support work as an alternative to outsourcing those jobs overseas. At the same time, more and more people are becoming home-based agents to have a flexible work schedule on their own terms.

But that flexibility may come at a cost, since the majority of home-based agents tend to work as independent contractors or set themselves up as a small business.

That means in most cases they don’t get employee benefits such as health care, paid sick days and vacation time.

And unlike employees who work in brick-and-mortar call centers, home-based agents have to provide their own highspeed Internet access, a computer and a land line separate from their home phone.

The upside is that homebased agents have more flexibility in their work schedules than traditional employees do because they can choose what companies to provide services for while setting their own hours. And though agents have to pay higher Social Security payroll taxes than traditional employees, they can also take tax deductions related to the expenses of having home-based offices. Also, they don’t have the expense of commuting and other work-related costs.

Home-based agents contract with an online agency that connects them with client companies. Sometimes, agents have to pay fees to the agency for background checks and Web-based training. Typically, agents are paid for each transaction — whether it is a phone call or an e-mail response — they handle.

“Flexibility was key to me. It lets me set my own schedule and lets me set my own goals and the number of hours I want to work,” said Hanlon-Akright, who contracts with Miramar, Fla.-based Arise Virtual Solutions Inc. She has health insurance coverage through her husband’s employer.

Currently, there are about 150,000 home-based agents, a number that is expected to exceed 300,000 by the year 2010, said Stephen Loynd, a program manager for research firm IDC. He came up with the term “homeshoring” to describe the use of home-based agents by companies as an alternative to outsourcing.

Besides stay-at-home moms, other people who become home-based agents are people with disabilities, retirees and military spouses, said Mary Bartlett, vice president for talent management at Arise, which has more than 5,200 home-based agents nationwide.

College student are also becoming home-based agents, she said.

ONLINE >In depth

- Arise Virtual Solutions - www.arise.com

- Working Solutions - www.workingsol.com

- LiveOps Inc. - www.liveops.com