Do You Want To Work With Freelancers Or WFH Independent Staffers Or Small Mom And Pop Shops?

With the ongoing tax season, many accountants have entered their busiest time of the year. But accountants often do much more than file taxes. Your work encompasses handling financial records and documentation, analyzing data, and helping to ensure the smooth economic operation of an organization — all duties that can be done remotely.

Offshore hiring for accounting firms is rising, especially post-pandemic, and hence cybersecurity & privacy of client information becomes the most important consideration for firms.

As the pandemic forces people worldwide to work from home for months on end, it’s become clear that many jobs we previously assumed had to be done on-site can be done remotely. However, there are fundamental questions here,

Should you allow your offshore team to WFH like your onshore team? Should you work with freelancers? Should you work with Mom and Pop Shops?

Of course, there would be benefits of no commuting, flexibility in working, etc. On the one hand, you might have some pros of Work From Home or work with Freelancers, but it would be best if you didn’t miss the other side of the story too.

Cons of working with Freelancers or WFH Independent Staffers or Small mom and pop shops :

1. You are risking your client information in a non-controlled security environment.
2. There is no supervisory control.
3. Maybe there are scamster targeting you and your business.
4. Lack of community and teamwork.
5. Unmonitored performance and frequent breaks.
6. Distractions and a non-soothing environment(for work).
7. Risk to productivity.
8. Giving access to someone from untrusted sources.
9. Power outages, unstable internet connectivity, and slow, outdated PCs lessen the productivity of freelancers.

So allowing WFH to an offshore staff shall never be done. Time and again, it has been flagged that working with freelancers or WFH employees overseas can be risky. Freelancers or WFH employees have a reputation for being unprofessional. Freelancers or WFH employees offshore work thousands of miles away from the client, unsupervised from home, often with multiple clients, and on short-term low-budget projects. A client thus has very little control or authority over an offshore freelancer. Hence, a freelancer is unlikely to be held accountable for their conduct and quality of their work.

Accounting firms who have worked with freelancers complain about missed deadlines, unavailability, poor quality, or incomplete work being returned to the client often. These problems leave the client frustrated. There is no legally enforceable contract or any other measures to protect intellectual property and data theft when working with a freelancer.

How Entigrity helps clients to building capacity without any risk

Working with partners like Entigrity, where corporate governance and compliance are at the core of their culture and philosophy.

1. Today, Entigrity is a trusted partner of 550+ accounting firms globally with 8 years of track record of ‘Zero Security Breach.’
2. There are strict IT & Privacy controls.
3. We run all background checks before hiring anyone.
4. We even bind IPs so no one outside of the office can access any information.
5. The monthly audit is done by the Data Protection Officer and ISO auditor.
6. Sonic Firewall is used to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of confidential information.
7. And their series of measures taken for the protection of privacy and confidentiality.
8. We have a contractual agreement with you to protect client information, and similarly, the offshore staff is bound by a similar confidentiality agreement.
9. At Entigrity, we don’t allow WFH:

You cannot entrust anyone and everyone with your client’s sensitive information. Never risk client information for flexibility of Work From Home, especially offshore. Before you partner with anyone for offshore staffing, please check their Work From Home policy and IT Policy.

At Entigrity, we don’t allow work from home. We can never risk client information at the cost of flexibility. We have strict NO WFH POLICY at ENTIGRITY.