FLEX MATTERS- Hear Their Stories-AriseThis Weeks Featured Employer

 Welcome to our second story in our series on Work/Life Balance: Flex-Friendly is telling the story of Flexible Work Options and Work/Life Balance happening around the country. We are calling the series "Hear Their Stories" and it will address Workplace Flexibility in large and small companies and across all sectors. We have some great companies involved in Flex-Friendly and they are sharing their stories with us so we want to share them with you.

Our second blog post is featuring Arise Virtual Solutions. We will be asking the same 5 questions week by week with the hope of sharing different perspectives on different companies and people. Today we are hearing from Jared Fletcher, VP of Operations at Arise Virtual Solutions.

1.What kind of work do you currently do?

Our Company, Arise Virtual Solutions, provides virtual/home based agent services to Fortune 500 companies. Arise customizes and delivers high quality voice, e-mail and chat customer service, technical support and sales through a network of more than 12,000 entrepreneurial, self-incorporated home-based Arise Certified Professionals (ACPs) in the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland. I am responsible for supporting the operations behind delivering the voice, email and chat interactions.

2. What is your current job title?

VP of Operations

3 .What kind of flexible scheduling are you currently using?

Arise provides flexible scheduling for both our internal corporate employees as well as our network of home based independent agents. For our corporate employees, we provide flexible scheduling around families and lifestyle. We offer many of our employees the option to work early or late in an effort to accommodate and support work life balance. In addition, the majority of our corporate employees always have the option of working virtually. Many of our corporate employees find this to be a tremendous benefit. Our business model for our independent agents is based on 100% flexible scheduling. We provide our agents the opportunity to choose their own hours in 30 minute intervals. For example, an agent may elect to work a few hours in the morning and then work a few hours after dinner. In addition to having the ability to schedule their own hours, they are also free to schedule the days that they work. Our ability to offer this flexible scheduling option not only is very appealing for work-life balance, but also provides the agents with the ability to service as many hours as they would like. Unlike many of our competitors, we do not cap the number of hours an agent can service.

4. How have flexible work options impacted your life?

On a personal level Arise has afforded me the flexibility of working from home and during off peak times, which has given me many more opportunities to spend time with my family. I am proud and honored to be part of an organization that has positively impacted many people’s lives with our flexible scheduling options. Arise’s business model enables our independent agents to spend more time with their families and supplement their income while providing them the option to take care of personal challenges such as doctors appointments and other time commitments.

5 .Please feel free to share any other information about how you feel about your “flex working”

I truly believe that we will see more companies in the United States move towards a flexible work schedule. With technology advancing as quickly as it has in the recent past, I believe that working a flexible schedule continues to become easier every day.

Thank you Jared for sharing your story.