Failing to Maintain Work-Life Balance? Find why in Issue 16 of The Outsource Insider
Welcome to “The Outsource Insider”, dispatched to you biweekly by Finsmart Accounting, where we share insights, resources, what’s trending and more - everything that becomes key in your growth journey
🧩 THE BIG IDEA
Why “Balance” Sounds Good — But Breaks in Reality
For decades, all of us have been fed a simple idea - you need to achieve work-life balance. A simple idea, truly.
50-50. Equal. Unconflicted and controlled.
But anyone, especially those running a firm or working in the accounting industry, knows that is not the reality.
The reality is far from the 50-50
Deadlines don’t distribute evenly
Busy seasons are often gruesome
Clients can ask for clarity even at night
Most importantly, while all this is happening at work, life doesn’t pause. There are emergencies there, too.
Some weeks demand 90% at home, and on others, you might have to pull a late-night shift.
Yet, when leaders assume unrealistic stability, that is where the problem begins.
The issue isn’t imbalance. It is building firms that don’t value their personal time as much as they value their clients.
This leads to:
Overworked and overwhelmed individuals
Unhappiness at work
Burnout - acute burnout
⚖️THE REAL PROBLEM
Burnout is a simple result of unmanaged work and not hard work.
Accounting professionals tend to misunderstand burnout as:
Long hours
Busy seasons
High expectations
All of that is a part of the profession. But burnout isn’t. Simply put, burnout happens when there is a lack of control and clarity. Burnout is a result of something deeper:
Priorities aren’t clear when work keeps piling up
Teams are busy, but are not aligned
Leaders haven’t built teams where they can step away
Effort increases, but output doesn’t get better
All of these lead to frustration and, within teams, that leads to attrition. Burnout is not a workload issue but a design issue.
🔍WHAT’S ACTUALLY BROKEN INSIDE FIRMS
Let’s call it out — most firms don’t struggle because of effort. They struggle because of how work is structured.
1. Everything Feels Urgent
No prioritization = constant pressure
2. Work Is Not Distributed Properly
The same people keep picking up the slack
3. No Clear Ownership
Tasks move. Responsibility doesn’t.
4. Leaders Are Still the Safety Net
When things break, everything comes back to them
5. No Recovery Windows
Busy periods end. Systems don’t reset.
This is what turns a temporary imbalance into permanent exhaustion. Teams can sustain pressure only when systems carry the load
🎙 FROM THE SMART OUTSOURCING UNIVERSE
“If we can be vulnerable, that changes everything in an organization. So, a people-first culture is important. And good mental health is an offshoot of people-first culture.”
When Randy Crabtree, Managing Partner at Tri-Merit and the torchbearer of the Bridging the Gap conference, highlighted this in a conversation with Finsmart. Talking about his own struggle with burnout and a life-changing stroke 11 years ago, he points out something very important.
Accountants have a tendency to try to have control over everything. And that he says has been negatively impacting.
The profession is short of talent, and the idea of sitting long hours and doing the same thing over and over again is pushing away young talent.
Watch the complete episode about burnout, leadership, and more:
🛠 THE PRACTICE BUILDER
Designing for Imbalance (Without Burning Out Your Team)
If the chase for balance has gotten you nowhere so far, you need something more powerful. A system that is proven and that works. A curated plan that can be amended when there are other things that need to be taken care of.
Here’s where you start:
Plan for Peak, Not Average
Don’t design capacity around normal weeks. Design for your busiest ones.
Define What “Urgent” Actually Means
If everything is urgent, none of the urgencies will ever be taken seriously - not within the teams, not with your clients.
Build Work Distribution Layers
When everything lands with the “top performers”, it is easy for them to get overwhelmed. Create a structure and delegate well.
Protect Recovery Time
After peak periods, reduce internal load, avoid immediate new commitments, and give teams the breathing space they need.
Stop Rewarding Overwork
If your best people are always overloaded, you don’t have a performance system. It is a dependency problem.
🌍 A FINSMART POV
Tax season shouldn’t feel like controlled chaos every single year. Yet for many CPA and accounting firms, the pattern is familiar.
The core issue usually isn’t technical tax complexity—it’s capacity and workflow design. When all the work is squeezed through the same onshore team, at the same time of year, bottlenecks are inevitable.
That’s where strategic offshoring comes in. Not as a quick fix or cost-cutting tactic, but as a deliberate way to rebalance workloads between onshore and offshore teams so your firm can handle peak volume without burning people out.
Read more to know how to have a better and more balanced tax season.
🎤 Join the Conversation: Our Upcoming Webinar
The right way to tackle burnout is to know what to automate, what to offshore, and what to keep with people.
While AI has become an integral part of the conversation in the accounting industry, there is still confusion.
Our next live panel is all about differentiating between fluff and reality, discarding the theory, and talking about what’s implementable in accounting firms.
Join us for
AI for Your Firm: Fluff or Ready to Implement?
Augment AI into Your Business the Right Way.
🗓️ 5th March
🕐 1 PM EST
🔗 Register now: https://finsmartaccounting-242729172.hs-sites-na2.com/ai-for-your-firm
See you next time!