Self-improvement and burnout are common concerns in the accounting industry.

CABA reports that 56% of accountants suffer from stress and are overwhelmed, compared to 41% in other professions. It also states that 43% of accountants have “constantly or often experienced indicators of burnout” over the course of a year.

The problem is that, in such a busy sector, it is difficult to identify the causes and know what to do.

How staff can quickly become overwhelmed and burned out in accounting

How do accountants get overwhelmed and ultimately burn out? It often starts with smiles and celebrations: the promise of a new job. It could be a new customer, for example.

Unfortunately, the client may not realize how much high-volume, low-yield work they need to do – tasks like accounting and payroll.

Then there is the introduction of new legislation. Updates like Making Tax Digital (MTD) and its quarterly reporting can add complexity overnight. Suddenly, each Your client needs more help and you have the same number of employees.

When this happens, your team of experts is pulled away from high-value work and buried in administration.

The essential link – how overwork becomes burnout in accounting

Overwork is a contributor to burnout, particularly in fields like accounting, where chronic workload, role ambiguity and pressure to perform can become a real problem. When accountants consistently exceed healthy limits, their ability to recover diminishes. This leads to chronic exhaustion, decreased motivation and emotional detachment from their work.

Over time, this cycle of overwork harms not only individual well-being but also the quality of work, making burnout a persistent risk within the profession.

Why Quick Fixes Fail Managers

When leaders underestimate the severity of a growing workload, the danger is that they react instead of strategizing.

The instinct is to push harder, ask for longer hours and give staff more money. But that doesn’t solve the problem. An overworked and tired staff is an unhappy staff, and burnout doesn’t go away with a raise or overtime pay.

Hiring more professionals is tempting and seems like a logical path. Unfortunately, the news is not good for many accounting firms. The recruitment market is difficult and vacancies remain below pre-pandemic levels. Even if you can hire easily, bringing in highly skilled people to handle repetitive tasks is expensive and demotivating for them. As such, it’s simply not sustainable.

The Smartest Way to Beat Burnout and Burnout: Righthoring

The real solution is strategic: matching the right tasks to the right people while applying the right controls. This approach is known as “rightshoring”. It helps businesses manage workload intelligently. Instead of expecting your core team to do everything, you divide responsibilities based on complexity and value.

Your immediate team keeps high-value work, such as tax planning, client advice and strategic decisions, in-house.

Offshoring moves tasks to neighboring countries with similar time zones and business practices to reduce costs and facilitate collaboration.

Offshoring delegates scalable tasks to remote sites for greater profitability and access to specialized talent.

Outsourcing uses external contractors for routine or specialized tasks such as bookkeeping, tax filing and payroll outsourcing.

Rightshoring: who should carry out which tasks?

You now have an idea of ​​what your workforce looks like. Rightshoring gives you options and helps you use your collaborators wisely. Your top talent should be focused on work that adds value, builds relationships, and grows your business. Everything else? There are smarter ways to do this.

With that in mind, here’s how you might divide up the tasks:

Who should do high-profile work?

Big customer transactions and strategic moments belong to senior leaders – partners and managers.

Who should do high value-added work?

Tax planning and essential business advice should be handled by experienced professionals within your immediate team.

Who should focus on compliance tasks?

End of year tasks and onboarding required qualified personnelpossibly supported by coastline Or off resources.

Who is the best staff to focus on more routine and specialized tasks?

Bookkeeping, tax returns and quarterly MTD reports are prime candidates for outsourcing.

Which staff must handle a high volume of work?

Payroll is a classic example here. Unless you have a team dedicated to complex cases, outsourcing is usually the most efficient option.

A word about automation

One important element still needs to be addressed: automation. Integrating automation into your processes is essential, but the goal should be to empower your staff and external partners, not replace them. Each core team member should prioritize high-value tasks. Giving recently graduated accountants a place in important meetings – even if only to observe – is important, because they represent the future of the firm.

The ideal solution is software that walks customers through their journey, reduces repetitive data entry by sharing information, tracks customers who forget to respond to emails, and provides many other benefits.

Read the complete guide to righthoring and put an end to overwork and burnout

Designed for accounting firms facing the pressure of high-volume, low-yield tasks, our guide explores offshoring as a practical strategy for distributing work intelligently.

• Protect your staff from burnout and disengagement
• Entrust high value-added tasks to your most experienced employees
• Streamline daily, repetitive, or high-volume work with outsourcing or remote teams
• Learn best practices for managing outsourced and remote teams

Who wrote the guide

Our guide brings together the expertise of two seasoned professionals:

Eva Mrazikova is a senior product marketing and digital transformation leader with over 20 years of experience in accounting, marketing and technology. As Senior Director of PMM and broader ACC strategy at IRIS Software Group, she leads go-to-market strategy, product positioning and customer engagement. Eva is also an accountant herself and therefore combines financial expertise with a passion for innovation and technology.

Jon Cooper is a Senior Product Marketing Partner at IRIS, where he helps connect software and services to the real needs of accounting firms. Having spent 10 years leading a team of accountants and bookkeepers, he knows first-hand the pressures businesses face and is passionate about making their lives easier through more innovative technologies and resources.

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