REMOTE STAFFING

8 REASONS WHY
REMOTE STAFFING IS
BETTER THAN OUTSOURCING
INTRODUCTION
Since the rise of outsourcing, all kinds of industries have adopted it as
an alternative to having their own resource onboard; this also includes
employees. Nonetheless, Accounting firms are no exception to it too!
Outsourcing usually saves the day during busy seasons when there is
huge workload but not enough manpower to handle it all. Accounting
firms simply outsource their core work to an agency. This, in turn saves
them time and efforts to hire staff of their own. On the other hand,
today, small and mid-sized accounting firms and businesses opt for
remote staffing contrary to hiring employees for their nature of work,
garnering it greater popularity over outsourcing.

Having remote staff saves considerable costs for accounting firms in

terms of hiring staff and upfront investments in building infrastructure
for all in-house employees. Additionally, it provides multiple benefits in
terms of eliminating with compliance nuances, add-on benefits to
employees, among many other things! Consequently, it gained instant
popularity among the CPAs and Accounting Firms. However, at times,
both outsourcing and remote staffing are misunderstood as being
synonyms of their purpose, whereas they are 2 different concepts. In
this article, we have identified and given a detailed explanation on, “How
working with Remote Staff is Not Outsourcing, and Why it is
significantly superior?” Let’s begin.
 TABLE OF
CONTENTS

01 A Remote Staff is Your Own Staff

02 Actual Staff V/S Ghost

03 Having direct and 100% Control

04 Direct Reporting and Accountability

05 Undergoing Learning Curve

06 Having Better Work Efficiency

07 Cutting the Cost

08 Hiring as Per Requirements

YOUR OWN STAFF
When you decide to outsource, you call in for some bids, award the
contract to an agency that you summarize as best suitable, and lastly,
assign them the work. What isn’t transparent over here is that you
weren’t offered to select who actually works for you! The person on
the job is the agency’s employee, and not answerable to you. To
whom would you give the instructions, reviews or suggestions in this
case? Who oversees whether everything is going as per the stipulated
schedule? There are barely any answers to such issues, leading to
oblivion whether the work delivered will be right.

Alternatively, a Remote Staff is your own staff. You get to interview

and test him/her before you hire, following which you assign work
directly to the selected candidate. You know the person has the skills
because you get to check it personally. Being your staff, they will be
doing 100% what your firm requires them to do. If your organization
is a small to mid-sized firm, and can’t often go through the process of
appointment, Remote Staffing is ideal solution for you. Firstly, you get
the handpicked qualified staff you need;

Secondly, you are free from HR hassles. When you hire a remote staff,
the hiring process remains similar to hiring local/in-office staff.
Screening resumes, interviewing / testing candidate, and finally,
selecting the best fit for your organization, are all part of the process.
You can also ask for background checks to be fully sure you are bring-
ing a credible person at work into your organization. Though, there
would seem to be limited scope at how remote staff can help your
firm; realistically, it is not! A Remote staff can assist you in your mun-
dane tasks such as back office, accounts, administration, data man-
agement, data security, process co-ordination, and much more. Also,
if an employee leaves the organization, the following process of
hiring, training, going live among several other tasks, need to begin all
over again. Such problems are often solved by Remote Staffing.
 STAFF V/S GHOST
As depicted earlier, you only choose the outsourcing vendor but
not the actual person who will be working for you. It’s a “pig in
the poke”, and you can’t be sure if you’ll get the best employee.
You won’t even know if the actual work is being done by a human
or a machine. You don’t even know if the person on job is an
experienced one, and can deliver quality work. He is apparently a
ghost for you!

In Remote Staffing, the process is completely transparent. Like

your in-house resource, you get to hire directly, manage their
performance, and you can have a different person to work on the
task if you aren’t satisfied with his/her performance. In outsourc-
ing, you cannot have such kind of Control. Neither can you pick
a person nor can you replace him.

Alternatively, You also know how experienced and qualified your

Remote Staff is. You directly know the person, and can see them
work for you (or at least supervise the work they are doing for
you), directly communicate with, and give instructions directly.

You can directly communicate with your remote staff through

phone, chat, or video conference, and brief him or review their
work directly. In outsourcing, vendors will appoint an Account
Manager who is single point of contact, responsible for Customer
Relationship. Somebody else, who does the actual work, you may
never know of, and may be even be changed from time to time
without your knowledge.

“Many companies have taken remote working to a

whole new level, making their entire company "virtual"
with remote staff spread out across geographical
boundaries!”
LEARNING CURVE
Being your own employees, remote workers gradual-
ly get to learn most things while on the job. They get
used to the office environment, and improve as they
gain experience working at the firm. They can inter-
act with clients directly, understand their require-
ments, and actively seek to do a lot of things on their
own. This confidence comes with the experience and
learning curve that they go through while working at
a firm across longer periods of time.

The idea behind going through the learning curve is

that any employee, regardless of position, takes his
time to learn how to carry out specific tasks or
duties. Consequently, the employee learns to com-
plete repetitive tasks sooner, reducing overall output
time. Learning curve helps Remote Staff in gaining
higher efficiency and increasing productivity with
time.

Whereas in outsourcing the person doing your work

may not be the same every time. They may be
changed mid-task, or may even return to work for
you a couple of times. However, that person may not
gain the experience of working with you, and under-
stand your work precisely which your own staff
would. There is no point expecting them to get on
the task with their own experience, and go the extra
mile doing something which adds value to your firm.

“Remote workers are self-motivated for staying

up-to-date on current trends that may influence their
work and help maintain their competitive edge.”
100% CONTROL
Unlike traditional working environments
where employees could be directly
supervised, it is difficult to keep it that
way in modern times as employees could
be working remotely. Firstly, when does
your employee start working, how many
hours does he work for, and how often
can he ask for leaves or his day off are a
few things that come directly under the
owner’s discretion. Outsourcing never
provides such control. The most you can
get would be updates on progress, that
too upon follow-ups.
In Remote Staffing Consistency & Accu-
racy in the Quality of the Work is very
high because the same staff works on
your projects according to your Business
Polices, SOPs, and processes. Whereas in
Outsourcing, it may happen that a differ-
ent person is assigned in every project,
works under his firm’s provisions and
never feels the need to ask for your per-
missions for leaves, etc. Evidently, it may
turn out to be surprising during delivery
time, and even return substandard quality
work.
Remote workers have shown higher
levels of productivity and engagement
with their work. You have 100% Control
over your employee the moment you assign
him/her for your tasks, during working hours
and even get updates quickly.
Hiring remote staff, you get daily updates. If
you want to communicate and discuss cer-
tain things you can connect via call or chat
easily, conduct review meetings, and get
things resolved at your convenience. If you
are curious to measure the productivity of
any of your remote staff, it isn’t difficult at all
to get such reports. There is a provision to
fill and submit daily time sheets for deter-
mining how productive has been the day at
office. Regular time-sheet updates is a sign
of a healthy workflow management system
that gives every employer the precise insight
into employee performance. It contains
every tiny detail how much time was spent
on which tasks, and which are yet to be
completed, or even to being working upon.
If you have your own time sheet software
you can ask your remote employee to fill up
entries into it. However, agencies like
Entigrity have their efficient and convenient
time-task tracking sheets filled by remote
staff every day, and shared with the
accounting firm supervisor. You are always
in-control even though you are miles away
from your remote staff.
Advantages of Remote Staff over
Outsourcing:
- Better monitoring of workers
- Ease of calling for last minute changes
- Direct Reporting
- Daily Work Updates
- Direct Communication with workers
- Increased Solidarity
WORK EFFICIENCY
“Ability to accomplish a job with the mini-
mum expenditure of time and effort”

For many companies, efficiency is one of the most chal-

lenging objectives to achieve. Every business organization
focuses on optimizing their resources for achieving the
finest results possible and reducing their costs.

Comparing Outsourcing and Remote Staffing is going to

be very different in terms of work efficiency. A remote
staff is given a task with a corresponding time frame to
finish the job. Thus, his working time should be well man-
aged to assure his client that all urgent tasks are accom-
plished as per priority. Since remote staff has a well-man-
aged schedule, he/she can selectively work on number of
different tasks as per priority every day thus making effi-
cient use of his working hours resulting in higher produc-
tivity.

Remote employees have access to email, chat, video con-

ferences, cloud collaboration software, and dozens of
other technologies supporting remote staff to perform
any office jobs/tasks conveniently and efficiently. You can
gain maximum utilization of resources in terms of time and
money. Remote employees are paid on the basis of their
scale of efficiency and the number of hours worked,
resulting in significantly cost effective and efficient man-
power source.

FOR EXAMPLE:
If you are outsourcing your accounting work, in most
cases, You don’t have the option to check the work, or
give your inputs halfway through the tasks. You will only
get the project report(s) after completion.

While in Remote Staff, you can check work progress and

efficiency at the end of the day, via daily work reports. If
found any discrepancies or inconsistencies, you can
directly collaborate with your employee(s), and make cor-
rections without delay. You can coach them on-the-fly via
internet, making operations much more hassle-free!
COST
Today, modern day staffing is not a walk in the park. It is rigged with a
lot of federal state and local compliances and formalities. It is very
difficult for everyone to know and execute it the cost effectively. Pro-
fessional staffing services are a big help with this. However, their
charges aren’t exactly cost-effective for small- and mid-sized busi-
nesses.

To deal with the higher costs onsite, full-time staffing businesses con-
tinuously look for implementing various other cost effective mea-
sures. Apart from the hiring process, there are several other notewor-
thy expenses involved after you hire any full-time employee. Few
such expenses include payroll expenditures, documentations, em-
ployee assistances, various taxes, insurances, long-term sabbaticals or
vacations, maternity or paternity leaves, paid leaves, etc.

On the contrary, majority of businesses have found remote staffing

meaningful as far as recruitment of cheap labor is concerned along
with enhanced productivity. You can hire remote staff for up to 75%
lesser salary than having in-house employees. Remote employees
work longer hours, and can work even when the office is closed,
thereby saving on overtime payment for employees.

When you hire a remote worker, you don’t have to pay costs of relo-
cation, offer benefits, insurance policy, pay for a bigger office space,
extra infrastructure costs, and other incidental overheads. Evidently,
remote staffing is a lot cheaper option than growing internally.

Furthermore, if you have extra tasks, your remote employee can scale
up and complete them by your set timelines. In most cases, this isn’t
allowed in outsourcing, for which they charge extra for such extended
services. Regarding cost and price, an outsourcing company may
charge on per project basis. For example, if any accounting work is
outsourced, a company will charge on per file or per account. There-
fore, in most cases, you will have more than one account, resulting in
paying significantly more. While in remote staffing, you can hire staff
on hourly wages or monthly fixed hours, which costs you lesser then
outsourcing solutions!
DIRECT REPORTING
Business organizations need to understand how they
are performing by continuously assessing and reporting
their set targets, goals, and objectives, and making
improvisations wherever necessary. Any continuous
performance evaluation requires precision reporting.
Many a times, it is required to keep direct supervision
with strict reporting to ensure maximum efficiency.
However, with rising compliance and taxes with refer-
ence to federal, state, and local laws, full time onsite
staff is a costly affair.

While talking about reporting of particular tasks or

projects, remote staffing and outsourcing have differ-
ent approaches. In Outsourcing, a team leader or
in-charge person reports to you, all the progress and
completion status of the work as allocated by you.
There are significant delays due to this mode of opera-
tion as well as instructions relayed about any changes
get further delayed. However, that is not the case with
remote staffing.

In remote staffing, you directly communicate with your

staff without any delays. There is no middle manager
who relays your messages or mediates between you
and your staff. When you relay any instructions, the
employee directly asks for clarifications or discusses
with you, if any further clarification is required.

With Remote Staffing, you clearly state what you need

and when you need it. At the end of day, you receive
detailed reports on each and every task. You have a
better grasp of the kind of work that your staff does
every day. In this case, you're already familiar with the
kind of work you wanted to get done. You know the
steps it requires to do that job/task, and the challenges
that come with it. Thus, you're confident that it won't
be unreasonable to demand a 24-hour turnaround.

Remote staffing is considered a perk for retaining top

talent, and strengthen the relationship with the
employees. Recognizing employees’ convenience leads
to higher trust levels between each other as well as
greater loyalty too.
AS PER YOUR NEED
Every business needs qualified staff to get most of the
work done in efficient way. Whether there is a small or
mid-sized business, staffing requirement is always the need
of the hour. Hiring a remote employee is a win-win situa-
tion for both the employee as well as the employer.

For each and every industry remote staffing is in demand

as it saves significant cost and time! When you Hire
Remote Staff, Hiring process remains exactly the same as
Hiring In-Office Staff, i.e. Screening Resumes, Interviewing
/ Testing Candidate, and Finally Selecting the Best Candi-
date. Consequently, you have the opportunity of choosing
qualified Staff that best fits your need.

Outsourcing never gives you the opportunity of selecting

the staff personally. There is an account manager assigned
to you, who is responsible for customer relationship and
communication. However, the actual work is done by
someone else. Whereas in Remote Staffing, you have
direct access to your selected staff who reports directly to
you.

They perform much like your in-house employee, only

difference being they are geographically located away from
you! The main advantage of remote staffing is, you can hire
staff on part-time, full time, hourly basis, temporary, and
seasonal. For example, an accounting firm wants to hire an
accountant or a bookkeeper for pre-taxation season only;
Remote Staffing is the best solution for them on an imme-
diate, priority basis! If, you are a startup or a small- or
mid-sized firm, remote staffing is the best solution. No
need to recruit and employ several personnel before your
business turns brisk. As more work starts flowing in, you
can gradually increase the size of your remote team mem-
bers as the situation demands.
CONTACT
US
 +1-646-827-4348

 www.entigrity.com
 info@entigrity.com