Republic Resumes went fully online seven years ago. I write employment documents for people across Australia (mainly SA and NSW) and Singapore. I use cloud technology, email for drafting and sometimes Microsoft Teams. This story is from the ABC’s, Daniel Ziffer.

The work-from-home revolution has shown many jobs can be done from home as easily as they were in office buildings housing thousands of workers.

Rachel Bragg runs her business from her home about 50km west of Noosa, even though most of her clients are in the city.

The way Ms Bragg is employed is called Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Financial planners meet clients and sell them plans, then pay her to do the grunt work of drafting legal agreements to cement the deal.

It is long-established for front-line tasks, such as call centres and help desks, to be contracted out to companies that specialise in running and maintaining those services.

BPO services are now doing increasingly complex business tasks that could change how organisations divvy up their workforce.

Technology and the drive to BPO opens up regional — and global — competition to previously protected and high-wage jobs.

“It’s a massive opportunity within the entire labour market,” said Frances Quinn, who consults to the BPO sector.

“To realise that I don’t need to have a full-time payroll person and a full-time marketing person and a full-time facilities person in my organisation in order to deliver the outcomes that my organisation needs to deliver.”

The tools for remote working — email, video-conferencing and file-sharing — have been available for almost two decades, but Australian companies have been loath to allow employees to work from home, even as commuting times have exploded due to suburban population growth.

Whether the response to the pandemic is a permanent shift away from working in capital cities, remains to be seen.

For more on this story got to: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-11/covid-work-from-home-might-become-work-done-overseas/12542354