Coronavirus: how to ensure client service is not hit by a staffing crisis

Coronavirus: how to ensure client service is not hit by a staffing crisis

Business across the country are being severely hit right now by the enormous and growing impact of the coronavirus outbreak

Coronavirus: how to ensure client service is not hit by a staffing crisis

Struggling firms are having to find ways to cope with the fact that key staff are off sick or simply unable to work in the office. The effect of losing employees for days or weeks – sometimes many all at once – could be huge. Even the impact of staff working remotely is bound to have an impact on productivity – even if it’s just in the short term.

Those staff who are well may be faced with the headache of schools being shut and may therefore be struggling to work at their usual peak capacity for that reason.

The crisis has created an urgent requirement for accountancy practices, like all businesses, to adapt or face severe repercussions for their future. Sooner or later it’s likely to affect your practice, if it hasn’t already.

Have you got a plan in place? Can your business carry on working as productively as normal during a crisis such as this?

Hiring full time staff – a good idea right now?

Much of the time, if a practice finds work is booming, with new clients, growing demand, and lots to do, it will look to hire new full time members for the team. That is, under normal circumstances. Of course, at the moment, we’re in a polar opposite position.

Hiring new full time staff right now is clearly not a wise or practical solution at the current time.

You might think that it’s worth it to get through the crisis for a few months but what then if you have staff permanently on your books and there’s insufficient work for them in the long term. It’s not a cost effective option.

In fact, it seems most employers agree, judging by the fact that employment agencies are reporting firms are putting a recruitment freeze in place while the coronavirus crisis goes on.

Even if you did decide it was a good idea to hire a new full time member of staff right now, think of all the practical difficulties created by self-isolation and social distancing measures. How would you go about carrying out interviews? That’s not to mention the time involved in finding the right people – just when you’re already stretched.

In all likelihood, trying to hire new staff at the moment would be just another headache that you can’t afford or face, while you’re trying to keep operations running as normal.

Outsourcing offers a solution

Already, in ordinary times, some practices hire temporary staff via an outsourcing service. This might be during some of their busiest periods, such as the lead up to the Self-Assessment tax deadline.

Outsourcing is already widely used by businesses as a cost-effective way to add an extra pair of hands to get important work completed on time and in compliance with legislation.

Although the circumstances are different, the principle is the same – your workforce is under strain and struggling to meet the demands of clients.

With nobody knowing how long the current crisis will go on for, practices may find they fall behind on deadlines bit by bit, are eventually overwhelmed, and then unable to manage everything, potentially with major ramifications for clients.

You may not be seeking help with some of the more complicated client tasks but what about an extra trained and qualified pair of hands to complete routine accounts and payroll work on a temporary basis? This could free up your full time team to concentrate on higher value and more critical tasks.

How are we helping our customers?

We have a long established outsourcing service called IRIS Resourcing, which many of our customers already use to great effect to make inroads into their workload when they’re working to full capacity.

It offers fully trained staff for accountancy firms on cost-effective, short, flexible arrangements. Our team, based in India, are fully trained and certified for ISO 9001:2015 QMS and ISO 27001:2013 ISMS, to comply with key legislation, such as data protection law.

In need of a hand and looking to find out more about it?

Call us today on 0344 815 5656 and we see how the service could be tailored to your requirements.

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