Accounting Firms: 9 Things to Consider Before Offshore Hiring
In today's business world, outsourcing has taken a prominent role, whether it be accounting or IT. These days' accounting firms are relying on outsourcing for various services, reasons to be outlined later. In the last few years, hiring and retaining staff is still a struggle for the accounting profession, and offshore staff hiring has gained a lot of attention recently as a viable resource. Assembling an offshore team has several advantages, first that comes to find is cost savings.
So ask yourself, "Are you offshore ready?" Let's think about what you should consider before selecting the right offshore hiring partner.
So, are you offshore ready?
Businesses that adopted cloud technology and remote working were ready to adapt to the new way of working once the pandemic hit.
Even if your firm is partially remote or has adapted to a full remote workforce, they are technically sound. However, there are certain firms that are still paper-driven, and those at the moment would be considered unprepared for offshore staff hiring. We continually inspect to see whether accounting firms are ready to hire offshore accountants since we rather not have unforeseen issues arise after onboarding.
Today, things have changed, and there are a few factors to consider when determining whether or not a firm is suitable for offshoring.
1. Talent wise:
When you are testing the talent pool, we advise it is not only the owners or partners who support offshore hiring but also involvement with the onshore staff who will be working closely with them. All members should be in agreement with the plan to hire offshore accounting staff as this will be just one team.
2. Process wise:
All processes should be in place so that the transition to offshoring outsourcing and scaling of your firm is much easier. Whether it's Client Onboarding, Document Recovery, Financial Reporting, Invoicing, or Follow-ups, it is preferable to scale back if processes are still being established.
So these are some of the criteria for determining if your firm will be able to offshoring or not, but this is not the case for everyone. Many businesses are willing to offshore their jobs and simply learn as they go. As a result, they improve and scale as they continue to learn after initiating this planning process.
We'd like to share an example of a colleague who employed one staff member for 20 hours per week. As a sole practitioner, Martin Moll, JD. (Breakaway Bookkeeping and Advising) often mentions that hiring offshore staff is one of the three crucial pillars for continuous development . He now has hired 5 offshore accountants that work alongside his onshore team and are entirely remote. Yet they are working together as one team, both technically and in terms of skill.