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| Page updated: 22 Apr 1998 |
| Page owner: ETO Site Team |
Why doesn't the European Telework Online web site provide a directory of teleworkers or a registry for teleworkers?
This question is frequently asked in our online discussion and in questions to the web site team.Its seems so obvious doesn't it: teleworkers looking for work; companies looking for skills; put up a register or directory where the two can easily find each other. The technology to do this is easy:
- For teleworkers: provide the teleworkers with a simple form to complete online, put the results in a database so employers can find the skills they want;
- For employers or companies generally: provide a search facility that enables them to enter details of what they want done or the sort of person they want to hire, and let the database provide a short list;
- And a further refinement: add a facility for employers to place notices of their vacancies or skill needs so that qualified teleworkers can contact the ones whose needs they match.
But there are several issues:
- Teleworker supply is not matched by demand: We get lots of teleworkers (or would-be teleworkers) looking for work; we get very few employers indeed looking for teleworkers.
- It's difficult to attain share of voice: "Share of voice" is a term from the advertising world, it relates to the problem of a "small fish" trying to be heard in a market full of "big fish". There are employment and temporary help agencies constantly contacting all employers offering to find people for them, and most employers who recruit regularly or use temporary staff already have a favoured agency. Against this strongly entrenched competition it would need a very large marketing effort to have a chance of competing.
- Too few employers are actively looking online: According to EITO there are some 30 million Internet users in Europe. However, relatively few managers and professionals are "actively connected", meaning that they use the Internet routinely as the place they look for things. The employment agencies have people knocking on doors, making phone calls and sending mailshots, because this is today the way to reach the majority who are unconnected or who may be connected but are not yet active users. An online service would have to be backed by a lot of offline marketing.
- Telework is still a hard sell: There's still management resistance to employing people you can't see and to managing at a distance. The main exception to this is when a company contracts out a whole activity, but they contract it out to a company not to a lot of individual teleworkers.
- Employment is still mainly a "national" market: There are many reasons for this: complex employment laws, tax and social security arrangements that vary from country to country; the extra cost of making payments in different countries and different currencies; the fact that in most cases the employer wants to meet the teleworker at some stage of the process.
However the situation is changing, with wider acceptance of teleworking and increasing use of the Internet. We believe that a telework register supported by the marketing capabilities of an existing successful employment or temporary help agency could succeed and we would be interested in hearing from anyone who plans to do this with sufficient marketing budget.
There's a related FAQ that answers the question: Are there any schemes to find work for teleworkers and do they work? and one that answers: How Can I Get Work As A Teleworker?
For links to other schemes for finding work for teleworkers, look at the telework links pages at European Telework Online - http://www.eto.org.uk/resource.htm#tworklinks