Nowadays, staff augmentation has become a norm in many industries.
The benefits of having a remote workforce far outweigh having in-house resources.
Today, countless businesses invest in staff augmentation because they face immense challenges while hiring and retaining the right talent at their workplace.
Some charge an unscrupulously high salary, while others come to work to become master procrastinators.
Having a remote or off-shore expert working behind the scenes to build your brand eventually fares best and meets your business goal in incredible ways.
They offer you a solution that outweighs what any in-house resource has to offer eventually.
Hiring a remote workforce to do your bidding is often called IT staff augmentation.
So what exactly is remote IT staff augmentation, and why has hiring skilled software developers and IT experts off third-party services become a norm?
Why have many businesses shifted their goals towards onboarding resources to work with them on short-term or contractual conditions?
In this article, we will offer you complete knowledge of what staff augmentation is, its benefits, and how it can help your business.
What is Staff Augmentation?
So you want to increase your staff, you want to increase your workforce.
In simple terms, staff augmentation means simply outsourcing your workforce for projects that require special attention.
Maybe you’ve got a client who is trying to build an app or software that has a complex structure.
Or maybe it’s something out-of-the-box or completely innovative.
Your current development team does not have the capacity or the capability to build such a software experience.
Now, if you opt to hire a software developer to do the job for you, you will need to invest a great deal of time and resources to get the software built.
With staff augmentation, you don’t have to worry about such things.
Instead, you can simply hire a software development team that’s working off-shore and is equally skilled & innovative to build that app solution.
Now, you don’t have to worry about legal hassles and you can simply avoid organizing documentation for full-time employment.
Why Do You Need Staff Augmentation?
Staff augmentation is an invaluable strategy.
Suppose you’re a business looking to enhance your operations or earn a competitive edge by coming up with a more robust digital solution. In that case, staff augmentation can help you achieve that goal.
Here are a few reasons why we think staff augmentation is good for your business:
- With staff augmentation, you can hire resources from anywhere in the world. It gives you access to a wide pool of talent, mostly skilled professionals who have an innovative edge. Staff augmentation equips you with a team that has a more diverse skill set and fresh perspective.
- An augmented staff model can give you greater flexibility within your teams. You are more well-equipped to scale up your business with off-shore teams without worrying about market demands or fulfilling the complex project requirements of your clientele.
- Staff augmentation also leads to cost savings. If you’re running low on budget and you need more key players working on your digital model, staff augmentation can open doors to affordability. With staff augmentation services, you don’t have to pay for office space, and equipment or make any long-term salary commitments. You can simply scale up staff & optimize resources all the while minimizing any unnecessary expenses with effective staff augmentation.
- The recruitment and training process of in-house employees can be a long one and definitely a cumbersome one. With staff augmentation, you don’t have to worry about reducing the time or effort spent on hiring and training these employees. While your business maintains momentum, you can easily focus on your business’s core activities and do worthwhile things.
- Another benefit of investing in staff augmentation is that it mitigates project risk across multiple teams. When you engage in staff augmentation, it takes the burden off the shoulders of your core team and you can easily avoid the risk of burnout. Your critical projects are subdivided into smaller tasks and are sent forward to more competent teams effectively.
What Are the Different Types of IT Staff Augmentation?
Commodity-Based Augmentation – This type of augmentation requires hiring employees who are highly skilled but can still perform basic tasks.
You can hire such staff when there’s a shortage of employees and when businesses have tasks going on pending that need quick attention.
The team is skilled in working both ways, irrespective of whether the tasks are complex or basic.
Skill-Based Augmentation – This type of staff augmentation occurs when businesses require bringing on board highly skilled workers.
It’s usually done to overcome and fill a resource gap.
Let’s say, your current business requires completing a certain form of complex tasks which require a particular skillset, then skill-based augmentation allows them to complete tasks timely.
Highly Skilled Augmentation – Lastly, highly skilled individuals are hired for very specific projects within the organization.
There are times when you need to perform tasks that require expertise such as coming up with an innovative product or solving complex problems for an existing one.
Times as such require staff augmentation of employees whose skills have grown so much that they have become indispensable for business.
When to Use Staff Augmentation?
Staff augmentation is a powerful strategy to enhance your in-house team’s capabilities and ensure success. It serves as a versatile solution in multiple scenarios:
When you need that extra firepower to boost your team, bridge skill gaps with specialized talent, swiftly expand your team to meet rising demands or tight deadlines, or even as an alternative approach when traditional models fall short.
By bringing in additional resources with specific expertise, you reinforce your team’s strengths and overcome challenges. Whether facing increased workload, niche skill requirements, or time constraints, staff augmentation ensures you have the right people at the right time, helping you meet deadlines and maintain your business’s reliability.
This flexible model provides access to a global talent pool, offering a cost-effective way to achieve your project goals when other methods aren’t working.
Staff augmentation empowers your team. It provides you with all the necessary resources.
How to Choose the Right IT Staff Augmentation Model?
1. Identifying Staffing Requirements:
Commencing with a comprehensive evaluation is pivotal when initiating the staff augmentation journey. The initial step entails pinpointing the precise headcount essential to address the project’s demands. Upon attaining clarity regarding the project’s scope, the focus shifts to identifying the specific skill set that holds paramount importance for the project’s triumph. By delineating well-defined project timelines and parameters, you gain a profound comprehension of these prerequisites. This proactive approach facilitates seamless communication and streamlines the search process, thereby optimizing efficiency.
2. Engaging a Staffing Agency:
With your needs clearly defined, the next step is to find reputable staffing agencies that excel in IT resource management and staff augmentation services. These agencies have vast talent networks, making it easier to connect with skilled candidates quickly. You can always begin your search for the right digital agency by exploring online platforms. You can even ask for recommendations from peers in your industry. By learning from the experience of others, you are more well-equipped to make informed business decisions.
3. Interviewing Candidates:
The staffing agency will take your detailed requirements and create a tailored list of potential candidates with matching skill sets. This efficient process ensures that only the most fitting applicants are presented, saving you time and effort. You can then proceed to interview these pre-screened candidates, using your usual evaluation methods to choose individuals who will enhance your team and contribute effectively to your project’s success.
4. Managing Augmented Staff:
Effective management of augmented staff is key to their successful performance and integration. Establish clear communication channels, regularly conveying project goals and expectations. Facilitate a welcoming environment, promoting collaboration between in-house and augmented team members. Offer training and support, provide performance evaluations, and encourage open feedback for continuous improvement. Ensure compliance with ethical standards, maintain contractual clarity, and manage offboarding professionally, fostering a cohesive and motivated team dynamic.
5. Evaluating Performance:
A performance evaluation process is indeed crucial to the success of staff augmentation. By regularly assessing the contributions of augmented staff, you gain valuable insights that drive improvement. Feedback should flow between the augmented staff, your internal team, and the staffing agency. This collaborative approach allows the agency to fine-tune its candidate selection, ensuring future staff are even better suited to your needs. Constructive feedback also empowers augmented staff to excel, fostering a culture of continuous development. This process enhances the overall effectiveness of the partnership, creating a dynamic where everyone strives for excellence.
Why Has Staff Augmentation Become a Popular Concept?
The popularity of IT staff augmentation is undoubtedly on the rise, and its impact on the booming software market is significant. With the industry projected to reach a remarkable revenue of $1,493 billion by 2025, it’s clear that leveraging a vast pool of software specialists through resource augmentation is a key strategy for businesses. The convenience and simplicity of this model offer a direct response to the dynamic hiring demands of modern IT enterprises.
Traditional in-house hiring processes can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, especially when faced with the urgency of time-sensitive projects. Staff augmentation provides a flexible and streamlined alternative. Outsourcing vendors take on the burden of hiring procedures, meticulously selecting skilled developers with proven expertise. Businesses benefit from a simplified interview process and easy integration of talent into their teams, maintaining agility and meeting project deadlines.
The traditional approach often entails lengthy steps, from screening and background checks to payroll and registration formalities, which can hinder efficiency, especially when temporary hiring is required. Staff augmentation, on the other hand, offers a swift solution, empowering companies to stay agile and responsive to market demands. By efficiently distributing IT talent, businesses can align with delivery dates and avoid potential revenue losses or delays in market launches. This model ensures a constant flow of skilled professionals, supporting the software market’s impressive compound annual growth rate of 11%.
What Are the Different Types of Staff Augmentation?
There are different types of staff augmentation services. Staff augmentation allows businesses to scale their team, yet at the same time ensures you choose the right one for your needs.
The four different types of staff augmentation services are:
1. On-site augmentation
On-site augmentation usually involves hiring professionals who work within the premises. They come over to your location take up the project and work in close collaboration with existing teams. With on-site staff augmentation, it is an ideal place to make close coordination, perform team alignment, and have robust face-to-face interaction. It also ensures that you experience efficient communication & have a strong working relationship.
2. Remote staff augmentation
Remote staff augmentation requires hiring professionals who work remotely. Such professionals can be onboarded from anywhere in the world have specialized skills and offer cost-effective solutions. Remote staff augmentation offers better flexibility and also contributes to efficiently scaling up your business. It also offers a remote working environment which promotes effective collaboration in a work environment.
3. Project-based staff augmentation
A project-based staff augmentation is a type of staff augmentation service where a team of experienced individuals is brought on board based on the project or assignment. Project-based staff augmentation is where you require a specific set of skills which are not available in-house. If you want to scale your team up or down based on the project requirements, you can have optimal resource allocation and cost efficiency.
4. Team-based staff augmentation
Team-based staff augmentation involves hiring a dedicated group of professionals who work collaboratively as an extension of your internal team. This group of individuals possesses diverse skill sets that complement the existing capabilities within your organization. By integrating this dedicated team into your business, you can enhance your overall capacity and expertise.
Staff Augmentation vs Independent Contractors
If you’re hiring a freelancer, you or your client will require taking a lot of responsibility. Whether it’s communication, management, or payroll, it can all add up and become quite a headache.
With IT staff augmentation, a vendor is responsible for taking care of all such tasks. They have their very own support team who work behind the scenes to handle the support work.
Besides, having an independent contractor is one who plays the middle ground.
When you’re working with an independent contractor, you don’t have to pay your vendor any commission. And you do not face any limitations to this approach.
Whether you’re looking for someone to bring up on your team to handle sensitive data, or you are in need of something else, the benefit of staff augmentation goes beyond the rest.
What Are the Pros and Cons of IT Staff Augmentation?
Since there are multiple outsourcing models available in the market, staff augmentation might work for some scenarios while, in others, it just might not be the best option.
That’s why we have put together a list of all the pros and cons, which will help you better decide if staff augmentation is the right way option for you or not.
Pros of Staff Augmentation:
Greater Flexibility:
As mentioned earlier, staff augmentation offers greater flexibility with rare and highly lucrative resources. While sourcing and hiring these individuals might be challenging, staff augmentation can also become time-consuming and expensive and may involve multiple steps and paperwork. Additionally, removing such employees could pose a threat to the organization’s credibility.
Cost Reduction:
Outsourcing talent leads to significant cost savings. With IT staff augmentation, you don’t have to worry about paying high salaries to different customers. Many organizations often struggle with paying extra for leave, days off, tax cuts, and other employee benefits. With staff augmentation, you can easily avoid these additional costs.
Better Time Saving:
Ask any HR specialist, and they will tell you how cumbersome the hiring process can be. It takes a significant amount of their time to create multiple job postings and write personalized descriptions for each job opening. Calling candidates, interviewing them, handling the paperwork to onboard a full-time employee, and similar tasks can be time-consuming. Staff augmentation helps avoid these processes.
Direct Communication:
When you outsource an IT project, you can communicate directly with the team, maintaining transparent communication. This way, you will receive all the necessary feedback directly from the right resources without intermediaries. As a result, you can communicate directly with the staff, assign more work, plan more sprints, and control the process through a project management tool.
Increased Productivity:
One of the most significant benefits of IT staff augmentation is increased productivity. Tasks that may take an entire year to complete with in-house resources can be finished within the set timeline using staff augmentation. Moreover, you are less likely to encounter roadblocks. Depending on the type of staff you augment, you can achieve better-quality results than those delivered by in-house employees.
Cons of Staff Augmentation:
Privacy Risks:
When you outsource work, a certain level of trust becomes mandatory. This trust can be vulnerable to breach when you involve third-party entities in your organization’s internal operations. To avoid such risks, companies perform regular security audits and address any potential security problems, such as cyber security threats. Ensuring that the augmented staff signs a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for data protection and implementing comprehensive security measures can help prevent such issues.
Managerial Bottlenecks:
As staff augmentation typically involves hiring an external IT team, the staff may not work within your office premises. Consequently, you might encounter managerial challenges, including effective management and communication issues. For projects to succeed, it is crucial that your IT staff remains well-coordinated with the managers and delivers services promptly. Ensuring that the augmented staff is attuned to your management style and expectations can help prevent such bottlenecks.
Quality Control:
Organizations focusing solely on cost reduction may end up hiring subpar developers, leading to expense overruns, project delays, and security risks for end users. Implementing stringent quality control measures can prevent this. Verifying the augmented staff’s backgrounds, ensuring their competence and training, and collecting feedback from previous clients can help maintain high standards and timely task completion.
Insufficient Technical Expertise:
Once you have defined the project scope, finding a reliable and talented technical expert to execute the job is important. However, a common challenge is meeting teams with impressive portfolios that fail to meet your standards. To overcome this, it is important to thoroughly assess the technical skills and expertise of the augmented staff, making sure they possess the capabilities required to deliver on your specific needs.
Wrapping Up
Staff augmentation is an incredible strategy that helps businesses to enhance their operations and gain a competitive edge.
It offers greater flexibility, cost reduction, better time management, direct communication with team members, and increased productivity.
However, it is essential to be aware of potential challenges such as privacy risks, managerial bottlenecks, quality control issues, and ensuring sufficient technical expertise.
By understanding these pros and cons, businesses can make informed decisions about when and how to utilize staff augmentation effectively.
If you are looking for a reliable partner to provide staff augmentation services and help you succeed in your digital transformation journey, Branex is here to help.
With our extensive experience and diverse talent pool, we can work together to provide you with the right resource that meets your unique business needs.
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