Digital technology saves the day
article for online Outsourcing Website December 2004
Picture this familiar scenario. You are in the office at 9pm Friday night, working late. Everyone has gone home and there is a report that needs to typed and sent to a valuable client right away. The whole deal depends on it. What do you do? Waste hours trying to type it yourself with two fingers? Or dictate and send it to a new breed of typist – the online secretary, available 24 hours a day at a click of a mouse.
Digital dictation technology is readily available. Recorders that were £300 18 months ago can now be purchased for less than £100. Files can be sent through high speed ADSL direct to online teams of typists and secretaries. Work can be processed in any location, freeing the employee from the bondage of the office. The ability to work in an office without walls is a reality. No company is too small to deploy home workers, says Tim Brill, head of analyst relations with IT consultant Avaya. “People think they need to be big but they don’t,” he says. “You get a lot of benefits; people can work effectively for longer!”
The benefits for the employer are also numerous, not least the freeing up of valuable office space as well as employing human and company resources more efficiently. “Hot-desking” is the latest industry fashion to be implemented by management gurus and it is fast becoming a crucial tool in the battle for competitive survival in the global marketplace. A number of transcription and secretarial companies are now providing services to home-workers and outworkers, enabling them to operate as productively at home as in the office.
OutSec has been supplying secretarial services online to British companies since the advent of digital recorders. OutSec has developed a sophisticated file transfer system called FileManager that allows direct upload to a secure client area on the Web without the need for email. This eliminates concerns about viruses, firewalls, size of attachments and ISP reliability. Clients can send and receive files from any location. Workers can operate in the office and on the move or, best of all, at home. Dictation is sent to secretaries with specific sector experience who transcribe and check the work before return. The same secretary is used for continuity and this enables a close working relationship to develop.
The appeal for the secretary is great. Home workers can have a higher disposable income mainly due to savings on travel costs which can account for up to 30% of the typical salary for a UK employee. They have made a lifestyle choice and found a way to generate income from their considerable skills in a way that suits them. One OutSec secretary works from a barn in Southern France that she and her husband are restoring. Another has chosen the sunny climes of Australia as a retirement location. Her client relishes the fantasy that his work, dictated from rainy Banbury, will be transcribed by his secretary on Bondi Beach.
Modern technology rarely makes life better, just more bearable. However the internet does now offer the ability to change the structure of working that may just improve the way we live tomorrow.
