But O'Currance Teleservices in Salt Lake City expects to have little problem expanding its work force from 630 to more than 1,000 by the end of the year.

Its secret? A change of venue.

"A lot of people want to work at home, so they want to work for us," said David Meine, executive vice president of O'Currance. "And once we have an employee start working at home, one of the only reasons why they would leave us is if they move or they don't need the income anymore."

That type of dedication is an exception in the call center industry, where most workers earn $8 to $12 an hour and switch jobs frequently.

Not all work-at-home arrangements at O'Currance are successful, of course, because some employees who work well in an office setting can't focus on work or perform at the same level when they are at home.

But Meine said such arrangements are actually more successful than many people may think. And they can pay big dividends that make worthwhile the extra effort involved in communicating, monitoring and evaluating a stay-at-home employee.

"We have actually found that productivity goes up by 15 percent when people start working at home," Meine said.

O'Currance was founded in 1994 by Meine's wife, Carla, who offered work-at-home opportunities from the beginning. More than 10 years later, not much has changed. O'Currance is still among a small number of companies, such as JetBlue, that offer employees the opportunity to handle customer-service work at home.

The company still maintains call centers in Draper and near Salt Lake City International Airport, where just over half of the company's 630 employees work.

The company carefully screens workers and requires them to work in the office from two weeks to three months before allowing them to work at home.

Before applying at O'Currance about three years ago, Ema Maile, a mother of four in West Valley, tried every work-at-home opportunity she could find. Most were scams, she says.

Then she was hired at O'Currance. After demonstrating in the office that she was a reliable employee, she was allowed to work at home, where she fields calls from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. each weekday.

Half of her shift is over before her children, ages 1, 3, 4 and 5, wake up.

"This is the biggest blessing in my life - to be able to be here for my family," she said. "I get to work in my pajamas if I want to."

So can Tanja Rice of Sandy, a single mom of a 12-year-old son.

Rice, who has worked at O'Currance for two and a half years, worked in the office for about a year before she started working at home. She now works 6 a.m. to noon, five days a week, at her home office.

Both women say they don't miss the time it takes to get ready for work, the commute or the office environment.

"I really enjoy working at home," Rice said. "It is greater than I thought it would be."

lesley@sltrib.com