Work from Home
Forum
I have read your article in the newspaper on work from home (‘Le télétravail, un nouveau phénomène ?’ by Aditya Narayan). Very interesting indeed.
Let me tell you our story. We are in the Outsourcing and BPO sector. We had our office in Ebene. We were finding it difficult to get people to work although we did receive many applications when we advertised for jobs. The problem was that applicants lived too far and the cost of bringing them to Ebene to work would be high. We had to find a solution as we were expanding. We had already started looking at different ways to reduce operational costs. Having an office in Ebene was already one of the major costs of running a BPO. We started a pilot project and introduced the work from home offer. This helped us get the necessary staff to work as we were not limited to only the nearby towns for recruitment. We were able to increase our numbers and needed less space.
Then another idea cropped up: why not help young mothers in Mauritius? As you are aware many young mothers have to leave their jobs as they have to look after their young kids. They would therefore stop earning and a reduction in income would be terrible in a young family. So we started looking for young mothers that would be interested to work from home. Surprisingly we were overwhelmed by CVs. This helped the family retain a good level of income.
Very quickly we moved our operations into a virtual office and all staff started working from home. We now do not have an office, all our staff work on online platforms. We do not have any transport costs; we have helped to reduce the emission of carbon in the atmosphere. We have gone green.
Work from home will have a huge impact on our environment, people will have to travel less, they will be less tired, more people will get jobs, incomes will be nearly the same therefore people will not have to make lifestyle changes.
For us our project was a success and I wish that many more companies and government offices start allowing their employees to work from home.
Sadiq Ebrahim Dawood
CEO – Multitask Outsourcing Ltd
Wakefield – United Kingdom
* Published in print edition on 28 April 2020
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