The AA has 200 home-based teleworkers taking emergency breakdown calls and has just started moving its insurance workers over to the teleworking model.

New recruits have their induction training in a call centre so that they get a feel for the brand and how it works, but their main contact with the company is through their manager.

‘From a management point of view, managers spend much more time one to one. In a call centre much more of the contact is in team meetings,’ says Martin Sawkins, HR director at the AA.

‘It builds a relationship with a manager that has a very different dynamic. So if you want to change how people work, it’s much easier one to one to spend quality time with them.’

It is easy to measure how well people are handle a call centre without them being physically in the same office. ‘With repetitive roles it is particularly easy to measure productivity. We have very clear measures so it is a combination of carrot and stick to motivate people,’ says chief information officer Trevor Didcock.

Although people work from home, the AA tries to pick groups of people in one area, so that they can meet up for meetings and to socialise.

However, the AA has learned that the kind of work people want to do at home differs from in a call centre. The company mistakenly thought that it would make sense to give home workers the simpler tasks to perform, but experience has proven otherwise.

‘The natural reaction is to make it as simple as possible, but the opposite is true. Emergency breakdown is straightforward, but what they wanted was a variety of calls, so we have given them administration and membership enquiries,’ says Sawkins.

Without the distractions and the conversation of the office, people look for more stimulation from their work.

Telephony costs of home workers may be higher, but people are 10 to 40 per cent more productive. It also helps employees who can only work from home because of a disability or other circumstances and would find it hard to commute to a call centre.

Many more people in head office work from home as and when it suits.

‘It is become normal working practice,’ says Didcock. ‘We have become used to managing a mobile workforce and over time, more roles have become mobile. It has come naturally, but I guess the culture comes from the top.’