In the past several weeks we have heard — and read — about huge amounts of work getting sent offshore. To India mostly, also the Philippines. Outsourcing is nothing new and rather expected given today’s talent shortages but 30%? Perhaps more?
Doing a quick search pulled up a 2011 Accountancy Age article which mentioned PwC wanted to send 20% of its core audit hours to India by 2014, this would have been a leap from the 1-2% of work being outsourced at the time that article was written 10+ years ago. We found a couple recent pieces that repeat a single statistic: prior to the pandemic, about 6.2% of accounting firms used offshore staffing, post-pandemic that number grew to 41.3% with many more firms not currently offshoring but open to the idea.
Would anyone care to share their experiences with offshoring at your firm? Because what we’re hearing isn’t great.
The guy who always comments “you kids better stop insisting on remote work or your firm is going to replace you with Indian labor” on our WFH articles is also welcome to say his piece, your moment has finally arrived buddy!