Sheffield plans to create home call handling jobs

Creative Sheffield has unveiled ambitious plans to create a legion of entrepreneurs offering customer service/contact centre services from their homes.

The Digital Home Working initiative will give individuals the opportunity to set up their own call handling companies, by supporting them with business investment, start-up advice and skills training.

Beginning with a pilot scheme of 50 people, the intention is then for a two-year programme involving 1,000 individuals.

Creative Sheffield will shortly be going out to tender for an experienced customer service/call centre or telemarketing supplier who can provide a routing link between the service providers and end-user clients. The project can also work direct with end-user companies. Recruitment and supply of the home workers will be undertaken by Creative Sheffield who will also provide them with all the necessary infrastructure and IT equipment for professional call handling. The intermediary partner will then manage commercial agreements with both supply and demand sides.

Commenting on the principles behind Digital Home Working, John Hudson, Director of Enterprise and Skills at Creative Sheffield said:

“The customer service/contact centre sector is continually looking for increased flexibility and greater efficiencies to overcome some of the difficulties which in-house operations commonly experience. The home working model is more flexible and readily accommodates the graveyard shifts and weekends. We aim to match supply to demand more closely. Improving the working environment for people leads to increased reliability and greater productivity. Importantly, operating overheads for virtual call centres are significantly lower.

“The Sheffield Digital Home Working initiative is particularly attractive to the industry because Creative Sheffield covers all of the recruitment and set-up costs for each home worker.”

The Sheffield pilot model will initially concentrate on high volume, inbound services but John is hopeful that the approach will quickly develop to include outbound services.

Companies and organisations who want more information about Digital Home Working should contact John Hudson at Creative Sheffield on 0114 223 2370. To find out more about Creative Sheffield go to www.creativesheffield.com

The Digital Home Working initiative is part of the Sheffield local enterprise programme, ‘BiG: Make it Your Business’ which is investing £24m over 4 years to encourage the creation and growth of more start-up businesses in the city.