These salaried employees receive all the standard employment benefits which Actionaid offers, including pension provision, life insurance and sick pay. Their pay is 51.40 a week. According to Helen Suffell, the salaried employees help protect NTT from the uncertainty of only using casual staff. An extra advantage is that the callers generally are themselves very committed to Actionaid's work as a charity. This clearly helps counter some of the potential management difficulties of using dispersed home-based workers.
Recruitment is undertaken locally when necessary by each team leader.
Helen Suffell stresses the importance of the initial telephone conversation, as a way of judging a person's suitability for the work. Once appointed, new callers attend a one-day training course, half of which is used for describing Actionaid's work as a charity and half is dedicated to telephone techniques. Thereafter, team leaders generally visit new staff in their homes, to overhear phone conversations made and offer advice and support. There is additional training for callers each time a new project is established. Recent projects, which typically run for several months, include 'Sponsor Get Sponsor', a campaign to invite existing sponsors of children to sign up a friend to the scheme, and a recruitment drive for new supporters linked to an Actionaid-sponsored question on a consumer lifestyle questionnaire.