Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Home Work: Travel agent Rebecca Russo, who has been an agent for almost 20 years, now works from home for Willow Glen's Peak Travel Group. She says telecommuting gives her more time to spend with her two sons.
WG business keeps staff by letting workers telecommute
Peak Travel Group employees work from home offices as far away as Boise, Idaho
By Kate Carter
After she drops off her two sons off at elementary school, Rebecca Russo heads to work. By 8:30 a.m., she sits down at her desk, boots up the computer and puts her headset on.
Her office is like any other office, except it's in the living room of her West San Jose home, where she works as a travel agent for Willow Glen's Peak Travel Group.
Some people can only dream of getting to work by walking down the hall. But about a dozen travel agents at Peak Travel, including Russo, get to do just that.
Peak Travel owner and president Tyler Peak introduced telecommuting to his downtown Willow Glen business more than three years ago. It has worked so well that now more than 10 percent of his employees work from home.
"It's not like I invented this," Peak says. "But it's relatively unique. We adapt to the needs of good employees."
Peak says he implemented telecommuting at his company because of a shortage of quality travel agents. He says he was able to hold on to veteran employees, who started families or moved farther away, by giving them the flexibility to work from home.
Peak's corporate travel manager, Alison Appleby, says the costs of telecommuting technologies are worth the savings in business their good agents make for the company.
"It keeps them with us and it keeps them happy," Appleby says of their home agents. "The success of the company is the seasoned agents."
Twelve Peak travel agents work with the agency's corporate clients from their homes in San Jose, Saratoga, San Francisco, Salinas, Morgan Hill, Hollister, Los Banos and Prunedale. Last week, a new agent started plugging in from Boise, Idaho.
Appleby oversees Peak's 27 corporate agents who are located, either in the office, at the sites of their corporate clients, or at their homes. She holds a monthly staff meeting where they all come into the main office together to discuss the latest developments in the fast-changing travel industry. The new Boise agent may come in less often because of the distance, she says.
Peak uses a system that keeps its home agents as connected as if they were in the main office. Each telecommuter has a computer with an Internet and email connection and software used to book travel arrangements and contact clients and the Lincoln Avenue offices. Each also has a separate phone line with a toll-free number clients can use. The home offices are connected to the main office's phone system--if a telecommuter's home-based office number is busy, a client can be transferred to the receptionist in Willow Glen. The receptionist can also transfer calls from the main number to the home agents.
The telecommuters have work schedules that suit their lifestyle needs. Russo works part time, Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., when she has to leave to pick her sons, Cameron, 7, and Nicholas, 5, up from school.
Martha Tidwell, who telecommutes from her home in Hollister, works full time from 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and handles many of the company's East Coast clients, who may need service when it's early in the morning here. Finishing in the mid-afternoon allows Tidwell to help her 7-year-old granddaughter with her homework, and take her to the park.
But while they are working, Appleby says, the home agents should be at their work areas fielding phone calls, answering emails and checking records. They don't have the flexibility to change their schedules from day to day and must inform the receptionist if they need to take time off for a couple of hours or a day.
Russo started working for Peak Travel as a telecommuter in December. The 19-year veteran travel agent says she took the job because it let her work at home.
"I've wanted to do this ever since my kids were born," she says. She has worked at other places, in schedules that allowed her to be home for her children, such as at night. Now that her youngest son has started kindergarten, however, her kids are on the same schedule and out of the house long enough for her to establish a home working schedule.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
At the Office: Sheila Johnson, a travel consultant at Peak Travel Group, takes customer calls in the company's Lincoln Avenue office.
Being a home agent also allows Russo to, at least, keep tabs on her work and "tie up loose ends," if her sons are sick and need her attention, even if she doesn't work a full day.
Russo says she does miss the contact with her co-workers, and the professional environment of working in an office setting.
"It takes a little getting used to," she says of working at home. "I do like to go into the office on occasion. I live close enough that I can still do that."
Tidwell says she also misses her co-workers, as well as the restaurants and shops in Willow Glen and San Jose, but her Hollister home is too far away for her to make frequent trips to the main office. She started working for Peak Travel about a year ago and began working out of her home last June. She has also worked for other travel agencies in the area for 22 years.
"I had never been able to work at home before," Tidwell says. "I really miss not seeing everybody. But it saves three hours everyday out of my life, so it's worth it."
"Not everyone is suited to be a home agent," Appleby says. Some people really need to be in a work environment with other people. Others prefer the solitude and freedom of working at home. And retired spouses or children home from school can be distracting, Tidwell and Russo say.
For many workers, though, being available to family and avoiding a nasty commute are conveniences that make telecommuting worth it all on their own.
Employing telecommuters can also be convenient for businesses in areas where office space is expensive and phone lines are hard to come by. Appleby points out that Peak's offices are cramped and running out of room to house the growing complement of staff, and the wait for a new phone or DSL line can take nine months. But the space for an employee in Los Banos is free, if they work from home, and getting a new phone line takes only a few days.
John and Connie Lozon, who own Willow Glen's Allstate Insurance office, say they would like to employ telecommuters to grow their business. Their branch is the second largest Allstate in Northern California and they say they would like to be No. 1. The only thing holding them back, they say, is the cost of space on Lincoln Avenue. They don't want to move, because that's where they started the business, and the visible location is important for attracting walk-in clients and generating more customers.
They've discussed hiring a telecommuter, Connie Lozon says. "It would be a solicitor, somebody going after additional business for us. It's something we haven't spread into yet. But the office is packed. We tried to get the space next door, but it was just too expensive."
Appleby says the only drawback to housing employees in their homes is that the business's institutional wisdom is less available to them. Home agents are less likely to develop a rapport with co-workers and know whom to talk to with specific questions or for second opinions.
"Some of the best resources are sitting right next to you," she says of the office environment.
But Russo says she knows whom to call if she needs some help. Her nearly two decades of experience keep her from needing much help, anyway.
That's the point of telecommuting, Appleby says--holding on to good, experienced employees who might otherwise leave.
"I've been 12 years in the travel industry," she says. "I've never worked where there's been so little turnover."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
