Debt Collectors Working From Home May Be A Reality In The Future
While it is true that professionals in managerial positions at collection agencies should always be looking for more excellent workers to add to their ranks, they also must remember that keeping the best employees around is key. These are the workers that have already proven themselves motivated and capable; often they are the hardest workers and bring home the biggest commissions. Trends in the collections industry have indicated that one way of doing this is allowing tenured collectors to work from home.
For these hard workers that have put much time and energy into improving your company, it might be a wise decision to accommodate for these people’s needs considering that the number of accounts that collectors receive nowadays might be smaller, thus reducing commission. Also, personal situations such as health, stress of a commute or a need to spend more time at home with the family might drive your top collectors away. Although work-at-home programs have not become an everyday thing yet, there are a few agencies that are currently making exceptions for particular debt collectors. Typically these collectors are the best at what they do and most likely deserve to work from home a couple of days a week.
The way that work-from-home programs operate is simple enough. Typically, the debt collector will be set up with a computer with access to the computers at the office and they will be given designated phone equipment to utilize. One of the perks for agency managers is that everything that the collector does and says can still be monitored, just as if he or she was working in the call center itself.
However, before you start to send workers to work from home, it is important to closely evaluate the good and bad qualities of each collector. Obviously, the debt collectors with the best work ethics can be trusted to work from home more than the easily distracted ones. But, research has indicated that if a debt collector is a good fit for working at home, they will likely be more productive, take fewer breaks, and without the social interactions with other employees they are free to hone in on the job itself.
Still, there are a number of problems that should be addressed before management considers allowing employees to work from home. First, there is the potential of data security issues. Also, due to the fact that there has been a staggering amount of recent legislation impacting the collection industry, many formal work-at-home programs may not come to fruition anytime soon. Still, researchers feel that it is not good to alienate the top workers at your agency who are asking about working from home. They predict that the collections industry will see more agencies permitting debt collectors to work from home within the next five years.
Mallory Megan works for Rapid Recovery Solution and writes articles on medical collection agencies
