European Telework Development

ETD Interest Group for
Telework: Matching Skills To Opportunities

The Challenge for this Interest Group

The Interest Group on "Matching Skills To Opportunities" was formed because this is one of the most frequently discussed topics in the European Telework Online open discussion. Its also one of the most frequently asked questions received by the ETD programme and indeed all telework specialists:

"How can I get work as a teleworker?"

The obvious solution?

Assuming there is a supply of teleworkers with skills to offer, and a supply of customers with work that needs to be done, one obvious solution is to provide a "matching service" that will enable customers and teleworkers to find each other and make appropriate agreements about terms and pricing. In theory this should be easy with today's Internet technologies - simply set up a website where teleworkers can describe their skills and services, and where customers can search for people or teleservices providers who meet their needs; the same website might also provide for customers to describe the tasks they want done and enable prospective suppliers to search for suitable work.

Lots of Issues

This basic approach is already being tried in projects at local, national, European and international levels, but with mixed success. There are a number of issues, for example:

Who pays for the service - the teleworkers, the "employers" or both?
If payment is required "up front" how can the teleworker or the employer be confident that a result will be achieved?
If payment is on a results basis, how can the service provider be confident that the teleworker or the employer will pay up?
If (as has been the case over the past few years) the supply of teleworkers is greater than the supply of customers (employers) looking for workers, how to avoid having a high proportion of dissatisfied teleworkers whose expectations are unlikely to be met?
If (as studies suggest) the majority of companies are not yet convinced of the merits and benefits of telework, can a service to match skills with opportunities hope to "educate the market" or should it focus on trying to find those few companies that are actively looking for teleworkers? If it doesn't educate the market isn't it true that demand will be much greater than supply and that most teleworkers will be disappointed?
If the market needs educating, isn't this beyond the scope of any one company or initiative? If it needs a really substantial marketing campaign how is such a campaign to be justified and funded? Is this a commercial proposition?
There are already many companies in the business of matching skills to work opportunities (employment agencies and temporary help agencies). Some of these companies are large multinationals. Can a new Internet based service hope to compete against these organisations or should it seek to join forces with them?
If there is a viable opportunity why aren't these existing leading companies in the market already pursuing it?
Can a service provider offer some warranty of the quality of work that will be done, or the accuracy with which teleworkers describe their skills, or the bona fides of any of the people concerned? If not, how can general confidence be established and maintained?
If its not realistic to provide a generalised matching service what are the alternatives? For example how about a cooperative enterprise that brings together teleworkers with particular skills to offer particular services in a selected target market? What other ways can be found to make a service viable?

A recent eto announcement gave a warning about a "rip off" perpetrated in the Dutch newspapers, in which a "work broker" got a lot of teleworkers and other home workers to send money and then did nothing to try to get them work. There have been other incidents like this, sometimes the "supplier" tries to provide the work but fails, sometimes there is just no effort. However it happens, the teleworkers who are most affected tend to be those who can least afford to lose the money.

A focus for this Interest Group

The proposed focus for this Interest Group is to:

examine the issues and
look at the experience of existing and past projects that have tried to solve this problem, and
come up with practical proposals for the future.

The ETD programme will seek to support any propositions that emerge that are, in our view, practical and in some way different from what has gone before. ETD will also ensure that worthwhile conclusions from the discussion here are fed into the European policy and programmes planning process.

A start point

A proposed start point is to surface and list existing projects, services and companies etc that are already working in this field. Only by understanding the experience that has already been gained can we have confidence that any proposals we generate are well founded. Mike Curtis (mike@mullsoft.demon.co.uk) has volunteered to manage the web pages at the eto site in support of the Interest Group, please send him the basic details (eg web url) for any relevant services you know about.

How to join the Interest Group

Please see the Interest Group's home page for details of how to join. Please note that the Interest Group is for those who want to take an active part in discussions, planning etc. If you have only a background interest please join the open discussion list.

Return to the Matching Skills To Opportunities Interest Group home page
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European Telework Development (ETD) Pages
GOALS | BENEFITS | PARTICIPATION | PRESENTATIONS

European Telework Online | European Teletrade Online

ETD is supported by the European Commission (DGXIII) as part of the Advanced Communications Technologies and Services (ACTS) programme. ETD's central web pages are hosted at the European Telework Online website.

Page address http://www.eto.org.uk/igs/igtwskl/chlnge01.htm
This page last updated 1 July 1997