Global Telework

"A lot of people want to work at home, so they want to work for us," said David Meine, executive vice president of O’Currance. "And once we have an employee start working at home, one of the only reasons why they would leave us is if they move or they don’t need the income anymore."

Fast computers and broadband connections have become so inexpensive and reliable that location is now not an issue for certain jobs, like customer service.

Past tech recoveries tended to bring new lower-skilled jobs as well as high-skill jobs. This time, tech firms — from big companies like Hewlett-Packard Co. to mid- and small-size firms such as Netflix, Adobe Systems Inc., and SanDisk Corp. — have moved lower-skill jobs out of the Silicon Valley area to cheaper locations, or outsourced them to foreign countries.

A 2003 survey of AARP members found that eight out of 10 want or need to work part-time or full-time even after they’re eligible for retirement, says Allen. "We want to help bring these people together with the employers who’ll need them," she says.

"The average high school student and parent thinks all IT jobs have already gone to China or India," said UC Berkeley computer science Professor David Patterson, who serves as the association’s president.

"People who could have wonderful careers in the field aren’t even considering computer science because they’ve got the wrong facts. If you’ve got the talents, this is a pretty exciting field with lots of exciting things to do," Patterson said.

"When you look at [farmshore] communities that are becoming successful, they’re saying, ‘Yes, we can compete with offshore, and we add value to these companies,’ " says John Allen, director of the Western Rural Development Center at Utah State University.

According to data compiled by IDC, it costs $31 per employee per hour (including overhead and training) to operate a traditional call center in the U.S., compared to $21 per employee per hour to use homebased agents.

Companies are expected to become even more reliant on older workers in the years to come. America’s baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, begin turning 60 this year and will soon start retiring. But demographic trend trackers say there won’t be enough younger workers to replace them. That means more companies will face staff shortages unless they can persuade some older employees to put off retirement and stay on the payroll.

Do you believe we’re entering the era of the "flat enterprise," where headquarter complexes will ultimately be replaced by webs of smaller branch offices? Or do you think the growth in branch offices is merely supplementing that in headquarters?

To answer this requires us to look a lot deeper at the changing performance you get over time as dispersed teams get used to working together and the absolute difference in cost and productivity that occurs.