Professionals in the accounting industry often ask us - how things work at Entigrity Remote Staffing. Mike Goossen, our Vice President, and the speaker has explained this in this webinar.
While working with remote staff it often comes into the mind of CPAs & Accountants "How Offshore Staffing Works". Be believe it is most important for us to explain when we are working with 500+ CPA firms. The whole method of working with a remote staff depends on three most important pillars: Communication/Collaboration, Access (to software and documents) and Monitoring & Control . Since the remote staff might be working from a different country, there are certain factors such as time-zone difference that come into play. So it is always better to know how leveraging time-zone difference helps in most cases.
Communication/Collaboration:
Internet and technology have brought the world closer than ever, so you can communicate and collaborate with your remote staff by using any of the conventional or modern methods. If you permit they will have a desktop based VOIP from where they can call you, text you and you can call back or text so communication is very similar like local communication. At Entigrity all the remote staff are provided with a US phone number.
Email is always there, traditional still most effective way of communication. You can provide email on your domain or else we can provide on ours. Applications like Skype, hangout, slack and many others allow you to audio call, video call, conference call and chat and respond at a click of a button. If you are using any workflow management product than remote staff can be managed through the same system. Otherwise small firms which doesn’t have anything doesn’t maintain some spreadsheets.
Communication Language
English is 2nd most spoken language in India. India is the 2nd largest English speaking Country in the World after USA. You can interview and test before hiring so you can verify the communication skills. But American accent is not possible.
Document & Software Access
The second element is document access & software access; there are three ways to it: It could be done remotely where you allow access for log in to the remote staff into to your server or work station situated in your office. They can log in and do the work and log out. This way you and your remote staff work on the same platform. There is no back n forth transfer of data or information required and most importantly your data never leaves your office. The other option is of cloud, just as you log in remote you login to cloud. Third option is of sharing – local where in documents are shared locally through email, drop box, Google drive etc. and software is set up locally in the workstation of remote staff and then he provides with the backup file which you can download/restore locally. Although many of our clients use this however this is not the best option as it creates multiple versions of files.
Monitoring & Control
Third element of offshore staffing is Monitoring & Control. It becomes more important because somebody is not working in your office. So collaborating and communication much more Important. If you have your own time and project management system then he can punch into that system like your local staff or else we shall provide you timesheet on a daily basis. Apart from these efficient methods of working remotely Entigrity Offshore Staffing provides Flexible Working Hours so that there is at least an overlap of 3-5 hours between you and your remote staff's working. If required we can also facilitate full overlap of working hours irrespective of time zones. However, looking at a brighter side of working in different time-zones you can always have this advantage of your remote staff working while your local office was closed for the day. This way the work assigned in the evening is done before you come back in the morning.
