How accountants can make remote work work

February 14, 2024 10:43 AM

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

Working from home has quickly become accepted as a viable alternative to working in an office. Indeed, offering remote work as an option when hiring is rapidly gaining currency as a way to recruit new talent.

With 12.7% of full-time employees working from home and 28.2% working in a hybrid arrangement in 2023, accounting firms are coming to see the critical importance of adapting to the new working environment.

Here are five perspectives on how the profession can make remote work a success.

Maintaining a team feeling while working remotely blog image

Maskot/Getty Images/Maskot

New strategies emerge for bringing remote employees on board

Hiring new employees and integrating them into a firm has always been a test, but with the rise of remote work, accountants are updating their onboarding processes to accommodate the new working environment.

"The advent of remote work has challenged traditional notions of onboarding," said Santiago Poli, co-founder and vice president of operations at Vintti. "In this digital context, where physical proximity is no longer a precondition for collaboration, redefining onboarding is imperative."

In an article for Accounting Today, Poli outlined seven strategies that can help make onboarding for new hires a success.

Read more:

Effective onboarding in the age of remote work

How Smucker’s core week schedule could benefit accountants

Finding the balance between having employees work on site versus working remotely is not easy, but AT columnist Kyle Walters, a partner at L&H CPAs and Advisors, found an unlikely source of a potential template — Smucker's.

"Smucker's identified 22 peak weeks of the year when it was more important to have everyone in-house, firing on all cylinders, collaborating, networking and mentoring," said Walters. "Smucker's publishes its core week schedule a year in advance to allow staff and teams to plan."

Walters described for Accounting Today the way the plan operates for Smucker's employees throughout the year and how this system could work well for a profession that is already based on "peak weeks" and less busy times of the year.

Read more:

What CPAs can learn from Smucker's

Accountants go global, and gain from international working

Remote work may have been given a little nudge by the pandemic, but is now becoming so popular that accounting firms are starting to use remote and hybrid work options as a recruitment strategy.

However, with numerous accounting positions in the U.S. remaining unfilled, working from home may be the solution to this problem too — by opening up the doors to remote work on an international scale.

From working across multiple time zones to understanding cultural differences and diverse work habits, Santiago Poli, co-founder and vice president of operations at offshore accounting staffing agency Vintti, walked Accounting Today through some of the dynamics of international remote work.

Read more:

Digital collaboration: Building stronger remote accounting teams

Opinions diverge on remote accountants' productivity

Now that the pandemic is behind us, the question about working from home on everyone's lips is, did it make accountants more or less productive?

Not surprisingly, the spectrum of accounting firm opinions ranges from employees becoming "highly engaged mobile superstars" to having "not done a lick of work since" they started working remotely.

Accounting Today editor-in-chief Daniel Hood explored where exactly the truth lies and why precisely that is the case.

Read more:

The productivity problem in accounting

Remote work continues for nonprofit accountants

Accounting firms have settled into a mix of on-site, remote and hybrid work for their employees, but a number of accountants are continuing to work remotely, specifically with nonprofit organizations.

While there are advantages to this arrangement and training is vital, cybersecurity and online scams are major concerns for remote workers.

Michael Cohn, editor-in-chief at AccountingToday.com examines the issues involved and what they mean for both remote accountants and nonprofits.

Read more:

Nonprofits benefit from remote accountants