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Convergys to add 100 telecommuting call jobs
Convergys Corp. will give about 100 Chattanooga-area residents a chance to work from home, company officials announced Tuesday.
A newly unveiled at-home work program will boost to about 800 the number of area jobs added by Convergys in the last nine months.
Including the new telecommuting agents, Convergys will employ 1,200 people at its operations in Eastgate Town Center.
About 70 of the telecommuting jobs will be full-time, said Virginia Maedgen, senior human resources manager. There will be day and evening shifts, she said.
The company will begin hiring this week and continue through the end of January, Ms. Maedgen said. The first of about five telecommuter training classes is set to begin Jan. 22.
Employees will complete three to four weeks of training and a month of work at the company's Eastgate center before shifting to home-based work, according to the company.
Veterans sought by IDOT
Wanted: Returning soldiers to enlist in the battle to keep Illinois roads clean, clear and safe. The Illinois Department of Transportation made an appeal recently to eligible veterans to join the ranks of snowplow operators, highway maintenance workers and accident responders.
Tammy Duckworth, the state's new director for veterans affairs following her unsuccessful run for a west suburban Congressional seat, pleaded her fellow veterans to fill out an application.
Veterans struggling to land jobs will find a good home working for the government again, she said.
"Show the kind of leadership skills that you showed in Iraq, that you showed in Afghanistan, when you were out there driving on those roads," Duckworth said.
"This is exactly the kind of job that is available for you."
There are plenty of openings.
Call Centers Come Home
In an effort to cut costs, companies have been outsourcing their call center functions for the past decade to low-wage workers in India, the Philippines and other far-flung countries. But that trend is changing as call centers are coming homeand into the homes of free-agent workers in the United States. Early adopters of the trend, which is sometimes referred to as homeshoring, include JetBlue Airways, Alpine Access, PHH Arval and LiveOpscompanies that since about 1999 have rejected traditional employer squeamishness about managing a telecommuting workforce and have made at-home agents their central staffing model. Now other employers are following suit, and the trend toward using at-home workers is taking flight. (See A Trend on the Rise.)
Some of the benefits that companies derive from tapping this workforce include reduced costs, increased staffing flexibility and an expanded pool of job applicants.
Working from home requires discipline and balance
Many people are trading in their commuter passes and cubicle life to work from home. After all, technological advancements enable remote access to servers, and just having e-mail and Internet access can provide workers all the tools they need to conduct business from a home office.
The appeal of working at home is very alluring to those who have sampled the benefits, particularly mothers or fathers who think this would be the ideal means to remaining in the workforce, while also caring for children. Many think at-home workers have it easy. Dont they have free reign to wake up late, remain in their pajamas and probably goof off more than they put in productive hours?
Thats how misinformed people view working from home, or telecommuting, as its often called. However, many home-based workers can attest that these statements couldnt be further from the truth.
Daly twins work on Extreme Makeover home
Two former Aberdeen residents recently helped build a home in Nebraska for ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."
Twin brothers Troy and Trent Daly, of Daly Construction, helped coordinate a team of about 50 volunteer carpenters, including 16 Daly Construction employees, in building the framework for a home built in Lincoln, Neb., for the televised show.
The brothers' parents, Tony and Norma Daly, own Daly Construction in Aberdeen. Troy, along with another brother Scott is the project manager for Daly Construction's Omaha, Neb., location. Trent is the project manager for the Sioux Falls location. The employees who worked on the show are employed at the Omaha and Sioux Falls locations.
The segment will air at 7 p.m. Sunday on ABC, local channel 9 (cable channel 13 in Aberdeen).
Developer sues Dwyane Wade over work at Pinecrest home
Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade and his wife are embroiled in a $152,000 lawsuit filed against them by the developer of the Pinecrest home they bought in June 2005 for nearly $4 million, according to court documents.
The suit, filed in May 2006 by developer PGS, alleges that the basketball star and his wife, Siohvaughn, failed to pay for ''improvements and additions'' to the six-bedroom, six-bath home. The modifications included expansion of the pool, installation of two fountains, enclosure of the cabana as a guesthouse and ''various custom items'' such as a fireplace mantel and entry chandelier, according to court documents.
''The only issue is my client was not paid for the work he did,'' said the developer's attorney, Christopher Berga. He called the money at stake ''a mere pittance'' of the $3.975 million purchase price.
Well, you said ...
A computer-illiterate user in the finance department requests a laptop to use at home, and this IT pilot fish objects. "There are only two IT people to support approximately 100 users and 35 servers," fish groans. "The amount of time we'll have to spend with this one user will be absurd. "Needless to say, we lost that battle. She got a notebook, and eventually she was able to work from home through our Citrix gateway." Fast-forward a few months, when a help desk request comes from the user: She's unable to work from home. Fish takes her notebook and tests it. He dials out, connects through the VPN to the Citrix gateway and logs in. Everything works fine. Then he sits down with the user and carefully explains how to use the VPN and the Citrix gateway. She takes notes, including fish's most-important-first-step rule: Make sure you are on the Internet and are able to access the Web before trying to use the VPN.
Heading for home and taking the band with him
Arlington High School's band director, Sabato D'Agostino, will return to his hometown of Salerno, Italy, over February vacation, and he will take the school's Jazz Band with him.
For 10 days, the band will tour the region, presenting its last concert at the Teatro Augusteo of Napoli, one of Italy's most prestigious venues.
"I've always wanted to share with my friends and family in Italy what I do here in the States," D'Agostino said. "But that's not the real reason we're taking this trip. I believe I owe it to these kids to give them the experience of their lives because they work so hard."
The trip has attracted the attention of Gianni Gallo, an independent producer for the RAI Italian TV network, who is creating a documentary program about it.
"When we are in Italy, Gianni will be following us, almost like Big Brother but in a nice way, filming the kids' reaction to Italian culture," D'Agostino said.
