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Even though it is always a good idea to hire more workers to add to your ranks, keeping the best employees in a collections agency is key. It has become a recent trend that tenured collectors are now requesting to work at home.

It might be a smart move to accommodate for them considering that their commissions have been lower as of late, and the stress of the commute or a need to spend more time with family may drive your best collectors away.

Work at home programs haven’t become an every day thing yet, but there are a few companies that are making exceptions for certain bill collectors. Typically these collectors are the best at what they do and may work from home a few days a week.

The way that working at home operates is easy. Generally, the agent is set up with a computer that can access the computers at the office and they are given designated phone equipment to use. The beauty of it is that everything the collector does can be monitored still, as if he or she was working in the call center itself.

Before sending employees to work at home, it is important to assess the good and bad qualities of each collector. But studies have shown that if a collector is a good candidate to work from home, they will be more productive, take fewer breaks, and without social interaction with other employees they can focus on the job itself.

There are still a number of issues that need to be addressed when one considers working at home. First, there are potential data security performance control and data security issues. Also, in light of all of the recent legislation impacting the collection industry, it is not probable that we will know of many formal work at home programs anytime soon. Yet experts believe it is not good to alienate the best workers who are inquiring about work at home. They predict that we will see more collection agencies allowing collectors to work from home within the next five years.

Mallory Megan works for a debt collection agency. Also she writes articles on business, finance, the credit industry and collection agencies.

U.S. Bankruptcy Code imposes something called an automatic stay the moment that a petition for bankruptcy is filed. The automatic stay will typically prevent the enforcement, commencement, or appeal of actions and judgments against a debtor from the creditors they owe money to who are trying to collect these debts incurred prior to the bankruptcy petition. The automatic stay also protects property of the bankruptcy estate itself from collection actions and proceedings.

If a creditor violates the automatic stay their actions are voided out. Any violation of the stay might cause the violating party to have damages assessed to them. But, like every complicated law, there are exceptions. A creditor might be allowed to take their collateral if they obtain permission from the court first. They’ll get this by filing a motion for relief from the automatic stay.

The court will either grant the motion or provide security to the creditor, ensuring that the value of their collateral won’t decrease during the stay. Without the protection of the automatic stay creditors could hypothetically race to the courthouse in order to improve their positions against a debtor. If this happened, and let’s say that a debtor’s business was facing just a temporary crunch, it might not survive a “run” by creditors when their business could otherwise be salvaged. A run may also result in waste and it might be unfair to similar creditors that are owed money too.

There are three kinds of avoidance actions, and all of these attempt to limit the risk of the legal system encouraging the downfall of a financially unstable debtor who hasn’t declared bankruptcy yet. The bankruptcy system will typically reward creditors who continue extending financing to debtors and will discourage creditors from ramping up their debt collection efforts.

Despite the seemingly simple nature of these rules, a couple of exceptions exist in the context of each category of avoidance action.

Mallory Megan works for a debt collection agency. She also writes stories on business, finance, the credit industry, and collection agencies. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service