Can "homesourcing" help to replace lost manufacturing jobs in Indiana?

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Permalink Reply by Brett Healey on August 18, 2008 at 10:03pm

I've been telecommuting as-needed/desired for a number of years. It is nice. I am not the type that struggles with being productive, but I think this issue is a significant hang-up for executives weighing the costs -vs- benefits. Tax incentives might encourage employers to be a bit more risky. The right person can handle a work-at-home position. Many cannot. The tele-communications industry (call centers) has found that work-at-home agents are a very profitable. Brick-and-mortyr centers struggle with lack of revenue generating agents because you need more agents sitting in the chairs waiting for the call spikes, than you can sometimes afford given the overall volume within a given hour. Work-at-home agents in this industry get paid for talk-time. Industry centers eat this arrangement up because they bill their clients for talk-time. Just as the tele-communications industry has capitalized on this "homesourcing" I have a hunch many organizations will figure out ways to follow suit.

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Permalink Reply by Douglas Karr on August 19, 2008 at 9:00am

Brett - you touched on something here and that's 'trust'. I work with a company right now that really struggles when I'm not in the office. I get periodic emails and phone calls all day. Not only am I working, I'm much more productive because of the lack of folks 'dropping by' to discuss things with me all day. Employers need to either trust their employees or get rid of them. Working from home helps in so many areas, but 'old school' managers who watch the clock really have trouble with it.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Dager on August 19, 2008 at 7:45am

I can discuss the virtues of homesourcing but if I understand your question correctly, the word "replace" is the keyword and maybe secondary "lost". Most of us look at at homesourcing as a way to make one's life easier while being more productive for the company. But if there is not a job to begin with, you truly cannot make it much easier. What would attract companies to use Indiana as the ultimate homesoucing "source".

I guess I don't have answers to these questions but you certainly raised some questions in my mind:
Why would companies create jobs in Indiana because of our homesourcing pool?
Do we have a better infrastructure to support this type of work?
Do we have creative outlets(Smaller Indiana) to support their social needs?
What training is needed for good homesourcing?
Is there insurance pools for these independents?
Do we have temp agencies, temp to hire, that specialize in this?
Are there groups that allow us to choose from specialist as needed?
What would differentiate us from India, Education?
How can we use our time zone to our advantage?

I think my questions made me think about how are we going to compete with India in an homesourcing sense. In a few years India will be the largest English speaking company in the world. They have a growing middle class in a very large population that will create a pool of educated people that will work for a minimum salary. Also, we can go to bed and wake up with the work done! With the cost of telecommunications going down that will be our next competition if not already for homesourcing.

P.S. I think your questions are great Pat.

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Permalink Reply by Pat Coyle on August 19, 2008 at 8:08am

Joe,
You're onto me. I think Indiana is well positioned to take advantage of new opportunities. You mention India as a large, English speaking country. True. But we Americans often find it tough to understand English spoken with heavy accents. We also understand the nuances,cultural allusions and figures of speech...plus, we're flat out friendly, well educated, and if we're working from home, we can compete on price. My reason for asking the question is simple: I want to know if anyone in leadership is considering ways to tap these opportunities, or are we ONLY trying to get mfg plants to relocate here? I say, let the plants live somewhere else. We don't need more traffic or pollution or cornfields converted to subdivisions, do we? We just need the jobs and we want to be home with our families...at least that's how we feel at our house :-)

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Permalink Reply by Douglas Karr on August 19, 2008 at 9:06am

There are disadvantages of homesourcing as well, though. Employees pretty much have to be salaried to provide them that freedom. Employees have to be trusted (something I touched on above). Collaboration and team building could be weakened.

I'm not disagreeing with homesourcing, but there's good and bad on every front.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Thomas on August 19, 2008 at 11:48am

This idea is intriguing. A sort of return to the cottage industries of old. If you think about it, I spend a lot of time at home, and could easily spend a couple hours a day assembling something or doing menial labor. I've always thought that companies would be better off outsourcing to rural America. It wouldn't be quite as cheap as shipping jobs to India, but would still have a cost/plus benefit.

The problem is that most things that could be made by one person from home probably aren't that valuable and wouldn't translate to good earnings.

So, my hopes lie in blogging and internet marketing. Using ideas and content to generate a new type of cottage industry.

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Permalink Reply by Joshua Billington on August 19, 2008 at 12:16pm

I work for a company that provides functional telework options to enterprise-level companies. In my research I have found a number of large telework programs in place with relatively poor structure or oversight. Employees are driving demand for more flexible work options and HR professionals are feeling the heat, but C-level executives are not yet ready to adopt, in most cases. Trust in the employee and lack of productivity are main concerns, mostly because of old school managerial thinking and not the reality that a solid telework program can actually increase productivity and employee satisfaction, thus reducing costly employee turnover. Not to mention that there are currently federal grants available for properly-constructed telework initiatives.

Indiana would be a great place to begin a statewide telework initiative and I'd love to see leadership that understands the value and opportunity in this area enough to invest more than just words.

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Permalink Reply by John R.(Dick) Troll on August 19, 2008 at 2:40pm

Sadly I do not think that Homesourcing can replace manufacturing jobs in Indiana or anywhere else. Indeed, our society not yet figured out any way to replace the standard of living that manufacuring jobs allowed large numbers of people to enjoy.
More ominously, every new technological development seems to allow one nuclear engineer- often in India- to do the work that once was done by five or ten such engineers in the United States. In short, highly developed skills are no longer enough to make one secure.
We need to at least consider the possibility that work is something that only a minority of people will be engaged in. If so, then what new mechanisms will we create for people to sustain themselves and give meaning to their lives?

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Permalink Reply by Hazel "The Queen" Walker on August 19, 2008 at 8:55pm

Several years ago, I gave up my office space, moved myself into my home and moved all of my staff members into their homes. We are all virtually connected, we have a young man who moves our mail and supplies between the locations every day. We rented a storage unit to keep all of our supplies and have a follow me voice mail system.

I will say it has been one of the best things I have ever done for both me and my team. They love working from home, they are more productive, and they are quick to tell people how they have the best job in the world.

I trust them and this is key to our success, to do what they are suppose to do. I am not sure I would hire just anybody and tell them I trust them to work from home, unless I had a way to measure their activities and output. And that is always possible.

I know that all of us have a better quality of life, we meet monthly and share challenges, needs and victories with each other. I see no reason to ever have an office again!

While I love it, I am not sure that there would be any reason for companies to move into the state just because we have homesourcing. How would we be better or different from anyone else in the country.

Interesting thought.

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