Virtual working is where a person or persons are contracted to carry out work assignments for a company or individuals whilst doing the work from a remote location. The individual is normally not an employee of the company and in charge of their own work organisation on a self-employed or contracted basis.

The virtual assistant would supply their own equipment and materials and supplies the company with the product. The virtual assistant would be responsible for their own tax, contributions and be registered with the Inland Revenue as either self-employed or a company if residing within the UK or if abroad be registered within their own country for tax purposes.

How has this developed?

Working practises have undergone a transformation and they are further to change in the next 10 years.

Whilst previously companies employed their own staff within their own premises on a permanent basis, gradually they started to employ temps for phases where work became intense whilst they didn't need the staff at slow periods. So large networks of temping agencies sprung up all over the country to supply such companies.

Now however this changes completely again, where the worker does not even come into the premises of the company but the company send the work to the virtual assistant for processing.

This new development has begun ca 10 years ago and is slowly becoming more popular.

Pros and Cons

One very large area of controversy about this working practise is the geographical location and the associated tax and law implications.

Whilst only 50 years ago secretarial staffs had to undergo security checks to ascertain whether they are suitable for handling confidential data, for which the Data Protection Act of 1998 provides the governing legislation, and workers had to reside in the UK to be able to carry out this work, now this concern has been abandoned by companies. For example now an employee seeking to work for the BBC has to get MI5 security clearance, whilst if the same work is out-sourced to India no such security checks would be carried out.

A huge controversy has erupted over the out-sourcing of work out of the borders of the country to locations in India or elsewhere, countries, which do not have this Data Protection Legislation, this led to problems like identity theft as it has been well documented that workers of such out-sourced agencies took and sold contact details of people.

One very large organisation in the UK for example, the NHS, contracts large amounts of the secretarial work to India, resulting in newspaper articles that spelling mistakes had occurred in the transcription of the dictated letters. The NHS justified out-sourcing confidential work to India with cost, however it remains to be seen whether this so-called saving will not balloon to a long-term problem of huge proportions instead.

1. Workers employed in the UK, typing the NHS letters were paid a wage, from which they paid taxes to UK treasury, benefiting the UK tax payer and residents in this country.

2. Workers in the UK would be subject to the Data Protection Legislation and could be bound by confidentiality agreements and data had to be handled in compliance with the Data Protection Act, whilst India does have no such legislation.

The Indian company carrying out the work does have no tax obligation to the UK treasury, creating a further gap in revenue for the UK resources.

Additionally to foreign out-sourcing the security risks are immense. Due to constant religious conflicts the area is known to be the source of terrorist activities and recent pictures in the media reveal how religious fanatics protest about some remarks of a catholic religious leader, namely the pope, but who says that those protestors are not employed at the data centre dealing with a Catholic's details?

On the other hand people remember when strikes within the UK prevented the handling of work by employees.

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Geographical and political boundaries

In general we feel it is best if work is kept within a region and handled with the boundaries of each country where it originates, may that be bank, health or commerce.

The problem of employees being disgruntled is ideally been negotiated by out-sourcing because an out-sourced virtual assistant would be self-employed and responsible for earning their own wage through self-employment and have a different attitude towards work then an employee in a company as the legal status is different.

Whilst the social benefits of an employee in a large company are involved with great fringe benefits and paid holiday and sick leave, maternity leave, a self-employed out-sourced contract worker would largely be responsible for raising his/her own revenue and for that reason keep sickness to a minimum and this would lead to an increase of efficiency.

The outsourced worker gains considerable benefits from this method of working, e.g. not having to travel for hours every day to get to work, benefiting not only him/herself but also the environment as it helps to reduce green gas emissions if people have to travel less. the out-sourced worker can organise his or her workload to suit customers and family commitments alike, so happy faces all around.

The company in need of work can cut dead time in which the equipment stays vacant, so the need to rent the room in which to keep the equipment, the purchase of the equipment itself and the payment of wages for the employee to spend at the premises are being removed, hence also removing the employers need to pay tax and insurance contributions and other benefits for the employee.

There is no security risk as long as the work is kept within the national borders of any particular country or region with particular trade agreements and the Tax authority of a country still benefits from the proceeds of the work as the virtual assistant has to declare tax on the earnings as a private individual or company.

One virtual worker can handle the work of several companies and or several virtual workers can share the workload of a big company or organise the workload for peak times.

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Other problems

New technology has no borders whilst geography still has, there is a discrepancy in what is possibly through electronics as this doesn't match with the geographical and fiscal restrictions of areas.

Whilst international trade can only be a good thing, helping to ease conflicts and bring countries closer together, the fiscal situation doesn't seem to be sorted out properly with electronic out-sourced work.

Whilst any company within the UK has to pay taxes to the UK treasury, a foreign company doing work, which is essentially British, does not have the British Treasury tax on the profits. This creates a vacuum in the  treasury's purse.

The Law

We think it is amazing that the British government tolerates the out-sourcing of work abroad, the work itself is subject to the Data Protection Act of 1998 and we therefore feel that it should be illegal to handle this material in a way, which is not compliant with the Data Protection Act of 1998.

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Skills

Computerised working requires a lot of skill and the skills of computer working and data handling, typing should be addressed, as if all this work keeps on going abroad, we are going to have a skills' hole within our own region because there are no typing jobs, there won't be people wanting to train as typists. The recent initiative of the British government to promote the entertainment industry, does not do much for skills to carry out administrative work or any other work.

The Cost

Due to new technology it is extremely cheap to make phone calls within the UK and/or abroad. sells not only the equipment needed but also the lines to assist remote working. With broadband phone contracts it costs ca 20p per hour to call Europe, landline local calls within the UK are free with a contract of fixed monthly payments and with broadband and Internet access one can communicate with any corner of the world for no extra cost. This is what led to the tearing down of physical borders with electronic technology.

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International work exchange

Indeed it is now so easy to exchange work from anywhere, that it doesn't really matter where one is, our working methods are just like you are in the same room, there is virtually no time difference through geographical location. With broadband connection it is extremely fast to submit large voice files. Previously people had to email voice files for transcriptions but our methods emit this time wasting experience, we enable companies to upload voice files for transcriptions in seconds.

However as previously outlined we prefer if work is carried out within the geographical locations it arises to respect the legal legislation of each particular region. There is no doubt that geographical borders are still in place and cross working is not going to tear them down. It needs much more political negotiations to also resolve religious and cultural problems to negotiate an understanding first. Apart from the fact, not mentioned yet, that some geographical regions of this plant suffer from more natural catastrophes and are more likely to do so in the future, which also puts a strain on work provision from a particular region.

It is a scientific fact that natural disasters are on the rise and these articles in the BBC database confirm this,

Deaths from natural disasters: 83,000 in 2003; 53,000 in 1990

Natural disasters: 337 in 2003; 261 in 1990, Buy BBC products from the BBC Shop.com

Our region has the least concentration of natural disasters and should therefore provide a safe base for the operation of administrative chores rather then the Asian continent, which is riddled by natural disasters. Another reason why people want to emigrate to Europe rather then the other way around.

More and better technology is being developed to help the early detection of natural disasters but this will not prevent them, what happens naturally on this planet is not to be controlled by ourselves.

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