Mommies Magazine

Major US Airline Gives Working from Home a Try

Posted on 22. Sep, 2006 by Nanette in Work at Home

One of the major US Airlines is giving working from home a try. They seem to be a bit surprised too that the idea of working from home is appealing to it’s employees. They are starting out small and slowly but it’s a step in the right direction for the work at home world.

You can read the full article found at Chron.com, Sept. 20, 2006 below:

Working from home takes off at Continental
Reservations agents try it and like it

By BILL HENSEL JR.
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

THE workplace just got a lot closer to home for Leslie Raffa.

A reservations agent for Continental Airlines, Raffa is participating in a pilot project that allows some employees in her group to do their jobs at home.

She says she’s saving money on gasoline and getting to spend more time with her family.

Houston-based Continental kicked off its program in June with 15 home-based agents and is increasing that number to 80, said Martin Hand, reservations vice president.

Feedback from workers in the program has been positive, with some joking they now can “take calls in their bunny slippers,” Hand noted.

Other employers are taking similar steps. The Families & Work Institute did a survey in 2005 where it asked large employers, those with 100 employees or more, how many let some employees work at home or off-site.

It found that 35 percent of large employers did so, compared with 33 percent in 1998, said Elizabeth Miller, communications specialist for the institute.

Cutting the commute
Raffa, who has been with Continental for about nine years, lives in Kingwood and said working at home can save 45 minutes of driving each way to and from the north Houston reservations center in the Greenspoint area.

“I have two young children at home,” she said. “This allows me to be with my family again instead of having to commute.”

Continental is hoping to have as many as 500 reservations agents working from home by year’s end, according to Larry Kellner, chairman and chief executive officer.

Many airlines, including Continental, closed reservations offices when travel slowed after the 2001 terrorist attacks and many more travelers began booking online.

Those closures led to longer commutes for many agents.

Continental, for example, closed its Denver reservations center and consolidated two Houston centers to a single location in north Houston. Some of those Denver agents have been commuting to Houston weekly, according to Continental, but many of them should be able to work from their homes now.

Continental employs about 4,000 agents.

Continental’s move comes as the city of Houston makes a concerted effort to persuade businesses to adopt flexible work schedules for employees to reduce traffic congestion.

About 130 businesses are participating in the Flex in the City program that began this week, spokeswoman Kathleen Kelley said.

It is running for two weeks and is aims to cut the number of vehicles on the road during rush hour.

Effort at St. Luke’s
Some Houston companies already were allowing certain employees to work from home. St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital started an experiment about a year and a half ago involving medical coders to see if they could do their jobs without going in to the office.

About a dozen coders participated, and St. Luke’s reported it was pleased with the initial results.

But hospital officials are especially pleased now because the program has been expanded, Debbie Mahannah, administrative director of human resources, said Wednesday.

Now, at least 16 are involved, and there has been no turnover in the program,
which she said is rare in this
field.

These workers assign the codes that are critical for insurance reimbursement and medical research.

“The employees just love it,” Mahannah said.

“There has also been a measurable increase in employee satisfaction for that group.”

The program is working so well that the manager who administers the program, Sarah Glass, has become a sought-after speaker throughout the country, Mahannah said.

St. Luke’s has measured an increase in productivity of more than 12 percent in
those working at home, she
said.

Giving morale a lift
Continental put its program involving reservations agents in place mainly to boost morale, Hand said.

The carrier had tried a similar program several years ago, but the test didn’t work.

Previously, call routing hardware and processes didn’t provide the quality of service the carrier was seeking, but equipment and software today are higher quality, Continental said.

Raffa said that to get set up to work at home, she just had another phone line installed that did not include any added features like call waiting that could disrupt calls.

Continental required that.

Home-based agents are told when they take on the assignment that interfering background noise is not acceptable, Continental officials said.

And the carrier has a quality assurance monitoring program that allows it to determine if the calls are as clean as they need them to be.

If the agent can’t supply that, they won’t remain in the program.

Raffa handles domestic reservations at Continental, working with travelers booking trips for personal and business travel.

“It really is a very worthwhile program,” she said of the move to allow agents to work at home.

“It is not just good for us locally, it is good for all of us in Continental.”

bill.hensel@chron.com

The more success big companies have with remote workers the more businesses will see the benefits of remote employees and hopefully more will follow the growing trend. Good luck to Continnental I hope the benefits continue to shine through.