Increasing Knowledge and Capacity of Home Based Workers

A home-based worker is an employee who performs his or her job from home, rather than in a designated workspace of any employer’s site. Home-based work is a growing global phenomenon with over 100 million people working from their homes. The number of home-based workers is estimated to be around 50 million in South Asia countries.

They perform their responsibilities and tasks from home and usually stay in contact with their employers via phone or the internet. This type of arrangement has traditionally been rare but is now being popular because of using new communication methods. From a human resources perspective, these home-based workers help save companies thousands of dollars a year since the company needs not provide workspace, job materials, or other amenities but they only pay a piece rate for the products.

Although the majority of their work is performed at home, some home-based workers sometimes visit their workplaces. Other home-based workers are self-employed, providing their own goods or services from their places of residence.

In Bangladesh, 71 percent of all women workers, compared to 20 percent of all male workers, are home-based. They lack collective bargaining skills, knowledge about OSH, and social protection. Besides, they face the problem of exploitation, low wages, and a lack of secure contracts. In addition, they have to pay for many of the non-wage costs of production like costs of space and storage, utilities and equipment, etc.

To improve their condition, they need the capacity and skills to bargain, access to local markets, and better capacities to compete in the product markets. Therefore, BLF started a project with its own fund with the objectives to identify the gaps of home-based workers to develop the capacity-building strategy for them and develop their capacity and skills to enhance the business collaboration of home-based workers. The project is located in Keraniganj and covered 250 women.