REMOTE WORKERS WHO ARE HIGHLY DEDICATED - IN MANY WAYS


When demand exceeds supply, there is room for inventive solutions - and one
of the best examples might be what is happening with data entry and
programming work being done by members of monastic orders around the U.S
and in Europe.  This isn't going to solve your staffing problems, but it
might give you some ideas about alternative recruiting strategies and new
approaches to outsourcing.

The first approach is the Electronic Scriptorium, a Leesburg, VA-based firm
that acts as an intermediary with various religious orders.  From the
company's Web site:


The professional staff at the Scriptorium is supplemented by a business
association with several monastic orders.  In the monastic tradition, which
dates from the eleventh century, monks have supported themselves through
some form of manual labor.  The tradition of copying and illuminating
manuscripts was a primary factor that allowed the redefinition of monastic
manual labor to include computer oriented tasks.  The monastic community is
composed of mature, well educated men and women who are meticulous with
detail and dedicated to excellence. 

The wide breadth of  knowledge combined with the many foreign language
abilities found within the monasteries provide a rich resource.  The
monastic tradition of silence offers a unique atmosphere in which to
perform quality work.  Scriptorium works with monasteries located
throughout the United States and Europe.
  

This is not entirely different in concept from what has been happening with
"offshore office work" done throughout the Caribbean and Asia for the last
ten years or more.  The first application was high-volume data entry work,
typically to convert from paper source documents to electronic form.  Today
these global outsourcers handle more sophisticated data entry work as well
as programming tasks.  

The difference, however, is a philosophical one: outsourcing this work to a
monastic order helps support the spiritual studies and lifestyle of members
of these orders who otherwise might struggle for funding.  As the
Scriptorium's description notes, many members of these orders have
foreign-language and other skills that are at least equal to and probably
higher than those available from other outsourcing providers.

I spoke with company president Ed Leonard who explained how he got started
and how the process works. Leonard had been commuting into Washington DC
from what was then a relatively rural section of northern Virginia, and was
working for a government contractor doing computer consulting.  In the late
1980's and early 1990's he was very interested in environmental and land
use planning issues, and was trying to prevent or contain development and
sprawl in his area.  One of his successes was preventing a developer from
putting in a landfill in what community members felt was an inappropriate
area.

"This got my name into the papers," he explained, "and I got a call soon
after from a brother at a nearby Trappist monastery who told me a developer
wanted to build a golf course and country club next to the monastery, and
he wanted my help to fight it."  It took them three years but they
succeeded in keeping the development away from the monastery.

When this process ended, Leonard happened to be talking with one of the
brother with whom he'd become friendly and mentioned that he was getting
tired of the long commute into Washington every day and was looking to do
something else.  The brother said that the monastery had just received
several computers donated by a benefactor to help the brothers automate the
administrative side of their holiday-season fruitcake baking business.  He
was to come there for six months, at a minimal salary, and help them get
set the computer systems set up; when he finished, they asked him what else
they could do.  "They only did the baking for a few months in the fall
before the holidays, and wanted to see if there was a way to find other
uses for the equipment," said Leonard.

He asked around and found some data entry work for the brothers to do, and
very shortly had found more work to be done than the brothers in this
monastery could handle.  "So, I found another monastery to do the overflow
work, and things just took off from there," he explained.  "We now work
with about a dozen monasteries around the country, and there are upwards of
sixty brothers and sisters working on our projects at any one time."

Leonard has a small administrative staff in his office, including project
managers and technical experts whose job is to work with customers to
understand project requirements and then set up the projects so they can be
handed off to one of the monasteries.  "We learned early on that it really
wasn't efficient to just  dump the work on the brothers and have them try
to figure it out," Leonard said, "so our project managers work everything
out in advance.  This helps insure we can meet the customer's expectations
for quality and timeliness."

Leonard says that the fees his company charges are competitive for the kind
of work and quality they provide.  "We can't compete with the high-volume
data entry or conversion projects that normally go to the offshore
suppliers - and while we'll take on those projects we make it clear to our
customers that they can probably get it done cheaper elsewhere."

The advantage offered by the Electronic Scriptorium is the quality of the
work and the dedication of the workers.  "Our customers love it - the
brothers and sisters are doing this work to support the lifestyle they have
chosen, and they have a very strong desire to do top-quality work," said
Leonard.  He added that the unique nature of his workers means that
customer delivery schedules and quality aren't affected by turnover, drug
problems, absenteeism, and other workforce problems commonly seen
elsewhere.  "It's really a win-win situation - the monasteries get a
much-needed source of income, and the customers get reliable work with top
quality at a good price."

Leonard plans to continue with this outsourcing model, but also will be
branching out to develop and market products on the Internet.  "We want to
start building a line of products in addition to continuing with the
service business."

The second example is actually a new venture that is part of a
"scriptorium" that has been operating for several years.  The Monastery of
Christ in the Desert  <www.christdesert.org> in Abiquiu, NM had previously
advertised Web site design as a service it provided to outside customers;
its site also includes an interesting essay titled "A Brief History of
Scriptoria" <www.christdesert.org/noframes/script/history.html>.
More recently, the monastery established nextScribe <www.nextscribe.org>,
described as follows:


nextScribe corporation is a non-profit digital media research, publication
and consulting organization operated in cooperation with the Monastery of
Christ in the Desert.

nextScribe corporation was born from the scriptorium@christdesert at the
Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico, USA. It was established to
serve the Holy Father and the Church in the digital media by performing
high-end research, design and consulting services. These services are
critical to the survival of God's Word in the third millennium, but their
performance requires more active forms of labor than the contemplative
monks of Christ in the Desert would want to undertake, lest their
contemplative vocation be too disturbed. Hence the necessity of forming
nextScribe. 

In order to fulfill the mission of nextScribe, we need extraordinary gifts
of love and talent. We have no place for ordinary gifts: we need creative,
technical and professional talent of such sublimity that it can be only
from God; and we require that this talent be wrapped in such Faith, Hope
and Love of God and neighbor that words are emptied. If you think that you
may be one of these chosen souls, we need you.

nextScribe corporation is a world-class, highly expert organization,
consecrated to the Holy Spirit in the service of the Chair of St. Peter,
and dedicated to developing the broad and deep expertise necessary to speak
God's Word to persons long into the third millennium.

Publishing on the web is an extremely complex undertaking, far more complex
than any other medium of communication. It requires widely
multidisciplinary technical, creative and professional expertise. More
significantly, it demands that broadly multidisciplinary teams operate in
concert. Successful use of the networked digital media requires a
visionary, high technology, creatively disciplined organization to master
the technology of the medium, the demographics of the audience, and the
design of the content.

If the Church does not have such an organization at its disposal, the Word
of God risks being silenced in the third millennium.

This cannot be.


When you visit nextScribe's site, you will see a highly sophisticated and
detailed explanation of the kind of work they will do and the skills they
are trying to attract.  This is not the work of a few people with idle time
on their hands; this is a serious, dedicated group with a well-defined
mission and strategy.

There may be other scriptoria associated with individual monasteries or
other religious institutions.  There are many other opportunities for
similar not-for-profit enterprises affiliated with other religious, ethnic,
disabled or cultural enclaves where there are more skills than there is
local work available.  These include Native Americans, Hasidic Jews, the
hearing-impaired, and - don't laugh - post-Woodstock-era communes - to name
a few.  In other words, anywhere that talent, technology and
telecommunications can be brought to bear on the long list of corporate
tasks that remain undone.

CONTACT: Ed Leonard (703)779-0376
                    (703)779-0378 fax
                     Ed@ElectronicScriptorium.com
                     www.ElectronicScriptorium.com