By Ralph Grizzle

Three years ago, when Kristie Loose told her boss she was moving out of the area, he responded by giving her the boot. But Shaun Balani was not firing Loose, or even accepting her resignation. The owner of Travel Time Travel Agency in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, did not want to lose this key employee. So he sent her home. To work.

Loose was the third agent that Balani sent home to work. Since Loose, Balani has moved each of his six corporate agents to home-based offices. As a result, Balani reports a 20 percent rise in productivity and a significant decline in overhead.

"Our rent went down about $1,200 per month, a 30 percent reduction when compared to where we were," Balani says. And the new location, at 525 Greenfield Road, is better suited to Balani's corporate agency.

But how does an agency owner effectively manage work-at-home employees? And how does one create an infrastructure that allows for seamless operations when employees are working from remote locations? Equally important, how does the agency maintain its corporate image when agents are answering the phone from their homes and in blue jeans or, gasp, pajamas?

We'll answer those questions in a moment, but first, here's what the agents themselves have to say about working from home and why they think the arrangement benefits them, the agency and the agency's 200 corporate clients.

Blue Jeans And A Dog
When her husband was transferred to a job four hours' away, Kristie Loose (she pronounces Loose with a long "o") had been working for Travel Time for about a year. "I liked what I was doing and didn't want to leave," Loose says. "So it was either find a new job or work at home."

Now living an hour outside Pittsburgh, Loose remains grateful for not having to switch employers. Moreover, she says working from home has distinct advantages, particularly for the employee, over having to show face in the office: no time wasted commuting to work; no excess spending on dry-cleaning or a professional wardrobe. "It doesn't matter what I wear to work as long as I sound professional," she says.

Plus, there are fewer distractions working from home and less "background noise," Loose says. She has no children. Her dog, who "sleeps all day," stays hushed.

On the downside, she misses being face-to-face with the other agents. "If I have a question, I have to call one of the others," she says. "The problem with that is that our phone lines are tied up while we're helping each other."

She also became concerned about the isolation, not just from her peers but from people in general. So she started going to the gym after work. "I didn't want to become one of those people who never leaves the house," she says.

Corporate agent Vickie Cunningham has three children, but they're not at home to keep her company. Travel Time's policy is that the employee have adequate child care.

Two of her children attend school. The youngest, a toddler, is cared for in-home. The care provider also supervises the other two kids when they return home from school so that Cunningham can continue working in relative peace.

But Cunningham also misses the camaraderie of her peers. Without them, she has found it difficult to keep up with industry trends. "I did not realize how valuable the knowledge and opinions of other agents were until I began to work by myself," she says. She reads trade magazines and gets some information from the internet. But keeping pace through reading is difficult given the busy days with clients and busy nights with children, she concedes.

And with the office right there in her home Cunningham says she sometimes finds it difficult to separate work from her home life. "I find myself working past my normal departure time at the end of the day," she says. "I also work on some projects on weekends."

But the advantages of the office being ever present far outweigh the disadvantages, she says. "If there is something I need to check on, I don't need to drive back to the office," she says. "My reservation system is right here at home."

Sheila Hilsher confesses that there is even an upside to not having others around.
At the office, she says, the noise can be very distracting. "I can concentrate better at home," she adds.

Making It Work
So that his employees do not become isolated from one another, Balani requires that agents show face at the office once a week - the only exception is Loose, who lives too far away. Checking in helps keeps the employees "in the loop," says corporate agent Lisa Miller.

With happier, less distracted agents, it's easy to see why the work-at-home agents would produce more efficiently than they would in the office. Other, more subtle factors are at play too. Balani notes, for example, the absence of "water cooler" conversations that can adversely affect productivity.

But setting up an agent to work at home demands a considerable investment. Each agent is provided with a computer, fax machine and printer. The agents have separate phone lines for Internet/fax and phone, which are, of course, billed monthly.

Another expense: Balani uses a system called OPX (Off Premises Extension) so that outside calls come into a central switchboard at the office and are routed to the agent's home when the user keys in the appropriate extension. OPX, provided by the local phone company, costs Balani about $300 per agent for the initial set up. On top of that, there is a monthly fee based on the distance between the office and the home location. In Balani's case, the lowest monthly fee is $40, the highest is $140.

The investment to set up an agent to work at home and the salary does diminish some of the savings, and Balani concedes that the cost of an in-office employee and a work-at-home employee may be about the same.

But even if that is the case, there are "subjective advantages" that can't be easily measured: employee morale, for example, and the absence of office politics. "I feel there are financial advantages based on productivity improvements," Balani says. "But I would have a hard time justifying them without getting a Time and Motion analysis done by an industrial engineer.

"There was a study done many years ago by Inc. Magazine that said 85 percent of the decisions made by successful entrepreneurs come from the gut," he adds. "So maybe that's what's at play here with me."

As for the six Travel Time agents who work from home, none are happier than Sherry Schwilk that Balani followed that gut instinct. "Allowing employees to work at home may help to keep an employee who wants to keep their job," Schwilk says. "It's a stressful job, but the stress isn't as intense when working from home."

Sidebar or box: Tips For Getting Started
Shaun Balani says his corporate clients respond favorably to the fact that his agents work from home. "Most think that what we are doing is a very progressive thing to do," he says. Many clients, however, have no idea that the agent on the other end of the phone line is working from their home. To make sure that the operation runs as seamlessly as possible, Balani followed these guidelines.

Make Sure You Have The Right Mix of Clients - Balani says the work-at-home concept works better for corporate agents than it does for leisure agents, because of walk-in clients.

Make Sure Your Agents Are Comfortable with Technology - Leisure agents can get away with just phones, Balani says, but corporate agents need e-mail and Internet access. Invest in technology, he adds. And don't scrimp. Provide separate lines for fax, phone and Internet

Remunerate with Salary, Not Commissions - "Our emphasis is on providing good service to our clients," Balani says. "With commission-based remuneration, there is an urgency to rush on to the next client. You can do independent contractors easily enough with commission-based remuneration and not have to worry much about trust levels. But I feel if you have a good relationship with your staff, the salary system is better."