With work-from-home jobs becoming commonplace in the corporate world, most companies are willing to hand over their operations to freelancers and work-from-home employees. The trend has caught on so much that even critical back office tasks related with regulatory compliance, accounting and inventory management are handed over to work-from-home employees. While it does seem like a good decision to invest in freelancers and promote virtual office environment, it is fraught with many dangers. A better decision will be to outsource back office instead of putting critical customer and company information in the hands of carefree homeworkers.
Work-From-Home Employees vs. Outsourced Workforce
There are many reasons why outsourcing back office serves as a better option than putting your trust in work-from-home employees. Have a look below:
- Although on average a work-from-home employee works for longer duration than an outsourced employee, there is no way to be 100% sure about his availability. This can be disastrous in a situation when a regulatory authority is at your doorstep asking for information, and the person who is handling the critical information is busy on a personal call (with no one else around him to tell him how important the incoming call is). On the other hand, you would always be sure about the availability of an employee working daily shifts. Regardless of what he is doing at a particular moment, there will always be a TL or manager in the vicinity to tell him about the importance of that call.
- Generally, it is seen that work-from-home employees handle more than one client at a time. No matter how diligent and responsible an employee is, concentrating on two different tasks can seriously hamper his performance. On the other hand, an outsourced employee has only one client on his mind. This allows him to work better and provide better services.
- Work-from-home employees can be freelancers or directly employed by a company. In case, an employee is directly hired by a company, it entitles him for many benefits like medical and dental. The cost of such benefits can be quite high. On the other hand, when you outsource back office, you work with employees tied to a different parent company altogether. The responsibility for providing benefits rests with that outsourcing company only and you are in no way shape or form accountable for providing them any additional benefits.
- One of the biggest advantages of working with a back office outsourcing company is that your customers’ information remains safe. As there is no way to know what a freelancer is doing with the information that you have provided him, you always run the risk of that information getting compromised. In contrast, an outsourcing company, especially one with a good reputation in the market will be a lot more reliable. It will do its very best to protect the information provided by you as it knows that theft or illegal use of such information will affect its own credibility.
Conclusion
Although work-from-home endeavors are becoming popular amongst companies, there is still a risk associated with them when it comes to certain back office tasks like regulatory compliance. A better way to disseminate your services is by outsourcing back office operations. This will not only help in increasing the efficiency of operations, it will also bring a sense of reliability to the workflow. Apart from back office, companies are also reaping the rewards of outsourcing by handing over their other non-core tasks like order taking answering services to companies with a good reputation in the market.