Downshifter Finds Idyllic Home Career

 

Ron Turner has found an idyllic lifestyle on the Isle of Bute, in West Scotland running a virtual call centre from home.

When 50 came knocking on Ron’s door, he decided to take his wife, Margot, and two young boys away from Glasgow’s concrete jungle and give them a brilliant place to grow up.

However, the move to this small yet beautiful little island of only 7000 residents, was set to alter Ron and Margot’s’ working lives. There were no jobs that fitted Ron’s long time experience of being a sales rep, so Margot took the brave step to go out and bring home the bacon.

Due to the massive growth in the Care and Support Sector, there were more job opportunities for Margot to work full time. Even though they have reversed traditional roles, Ron believes it is becoming more common for men to be ‘stay at home’ dads. In fact, in some cases the recession has made it easier for women to gain employment than men.

Before working from home with his own home based call centre Ron had a long career as a sales rep chasing up and down the country with an employment history of 25 years with one company.

Ron, now aged 54, quickly got bored doing nothing when the boys were at school. While on the hunt to find a part time job to fill a few hours, he stumbled upon Arise Virtual Solutions, the world’s leader in 'homeshoring'.

Arise enable people to work from home and establish their own 'Virtual Services Corporation', which is then linked through Arise to deliver customer services to large companies, such as Shop Direct and Littlewoods.

Arise Home Workers choose their own hours and provide customer service, technical support and sales services via the phone, email and chat - all done from their home office.

Initially, Ron had planned to only do few hours, but thoroughly enjoyed it and that rose steadily 15 to 20 hours taking and processing orders and payments.

Ron moved to another level, handling enquiries and orders and now fits 30 hours per week, at home around the boys’ school times. He starts his day with the school run, then spends a few hours working from home before picking up his little one from pre-school and his other son in the afternoon.

He has the flexibility to shift his hours around his family commitments and after he tucks the boys into bed, he catches up with a last few hours of taking orders until 10 or 11 pm.

Ron said: “I feel blessed to be able to pick and choose my hours and spend quality time with the boys. Trying to find employment at my age is difficult and there is no age barrier with Arise.

“Mature people have lots of experience and it’s a pity they are often not well regarded in the workplace. I love working from home and I’m very pleased with their tremendous training and support.”

Even though he was sceptical to start with, this work lifestyle suits Ron down to the ground and he is now looking forward to becoming a Quality Assurance and Performance Facilitator. In his new role he will help, support and guide newer people coming into the business as he loves teaching and training and above all, seeing people progress.

All of this is done via the web and phone line with virtual meetings, conferences and online training. Ron even believes that Arise’s training is better than the top blue chip company he worked with for more than 25 years.

VP of Strategic Sourcing & Operations, Jared Fletcher said: ‘As the economy recovers Arise UK is building a new and modern workplace model by adding independent home based businesses to the UK economy. Before June we’ll welcome 1,500 new home based professionals to our virtual network, and we’d like to see them progress like Ron.’

For more information on how you could work from home as a virtual customer service professional, browse http://www.arise.com/in-the-united-kingdom