Everything You Wanted to Know About benefits of staff augmentation
Having a large project looming ahead of you is a good thing. At this point, you need to focus on the project to get the best out of it. Worrying about recruiting and hiring an experienced team should be the last thing to cross your mind. According to Forbes magazine (1):
“When we consider the massive expenses associated with the recruiting/training/maintenance process of a whole department, we can see why this is a major worry for business owners.”
-Forbes
Taking advantage of staff augmentation services helps you get the help you need. In this case, it is outsourcing the right team to work on your project on a scalable, per-project basis. You can easily focus on the big picture, including your business goals.
After reading this piece, you will have a deeper understanding of staff augmentation services, including the difference between project outsourcing and staff augmentation. But most importantly, we will keep you updated on the benefits of this outsourcing model. If you are interested in using staff augmentation in your business contact sonatafy today!
But first things first! What does staff augmentation mean?
What Does team Staff Augmentation Mean?
Staff augmentation is simply an outsourcing strategy companies use to staff a project while responding to the business objectives. The strategy allows firms of all sizes to temporarily extend their team after analyzing the lack of specific skills on a project. This practice has helped many businesses deliver projects.
There is no need to hire an experienced professional If you know you will only need them for some weeks or months. It’s a way of cutting costs in every possible way. Full-time workers cost companies money, considering the salaries, benefits, and tax expenses a company has to incur. (2) But with augmented staffing, you only engage specialized skills when needed, without the costly and long-term commitments. Additionally, since the new Affordable Care Act seems to make hiring permanent workers more challenging and costly, staff augmentation services can be a good alternative for bypassing restrictive ACA regulations, including expensive health insurance fees.
Experience Matters
You will more confidently assign tasks and projects if you temporarily expand your team’s capacity with specialized skills. The good thing about experienced mid-career professionals is that they won’t require much assistance and training, unlike interns and temps. All you need is to assign the necessary tasks and projects, and the augmented team will deliver promptly. An experienced professional comes with an extensive skill set, works on your project, and ultimately frees up your precious time so that you can concentrate on the big picture.
Boosted Flexibility Saves Time and Money
In the end, you aim to save both time and money. And hiring a short-term worker for the specific projects you only need help with can propel you to achieving just that. Many businesses struggle with downtime and finding tasks for full-time workers to work on when no work is available. To cut these costs, you only need a staff augmentation service that allows you to only pay for the time worked.
For instance, you need forty intensive programming hours for one week and only four hours the following week. You can be sure that only a few full-time employees will likely go for that type of schedule. Luckily, selecting the right augmented staff team makes everything easy and seamless to plan for big or small projects.
Enjoy an Objective Voice and Outlook
Want an objective opinion, including a fresh viewpoint on how things in your business are going? Incorporate a short-term staff member into your project and see how it goes. In addition to bringing new ideas, outsiders who will only offer their services for a short time are much less likely to involve themselves in office politics (3). This, in turn, maximizes output, and you get to achieve your end goal.
Choose the Skills You Need Most
If you target the skills you need now, you will likely get an effective workforce in place affordably and quickly. It doesn’t matter whether you need help with a specific project or for your entire company. No business owner has the time to hire one person and then hope that they bring the right expertise for the task ahead.
What’s the Difference Between Project Outsourcing and Staff Augmentation?
The primary difference between project outsourcing and staff augmentation is the person responsible for project management and the one responsible for the outcomes. In IT, project outsourcing refers to outsourcing aspects of a project or the whole project to an external firm. On the other side, staff augmentation incorporates virtual resources to your in-house IT team to aid in managing the workload.
The outsourcing firm in IT project outsourcing typically manages the project and becomes accountable for the outcomes. Conversely, staff augmentation depends on in-house project management, leaving your business responsible for the results.
Click here to learn more details on the specifics of outsource staffing!
What Are the Benefits of Staff Augmentation
Highly-skilled Short-Term
Your current crop of developers might be outstanding, delivering top-class projects. (4) However, once in a while, you may take on a project that demands specific skills that your current in-house team may not have. In such cases, you will need to expand your team capacity and broaden your skills, contributing to a successful project.
Scalability
While your company can scale up faster if it hires full-time employees, temporary staffing through staff augmentation offers flexibility to handle projects of any size. That also implies that you can scale up without sacrificing the work quality.
Cuts in Operating Costs
For a smaller business, staff augmentation services help reduce the necessity to sustain some items such as taxes, insurance, etc. Generally, this outsourcing strategy can offer your business quality services on a short-term basis, meaning there will be no long-term commitments to honor.
Higher staff Efficiency
Short-term remote workers can help partially suppress fixed costs, an accumulating problem many businesses face today. So, avoiding the accumulation of expenses from full-time workers can help companies keep costs low and elevate efficiency.
Keeping Ahead of the Curve
In some cases, you can take advantage of staff augmentation and stay ahead of the curve. For example, when developing a new product to launch but realizing that your competitors may be planning to do the same, hiring part-time, flexible workers can help you expand your capacity to outdo the competition.
Better staff Management
Businesses benefit from staff augmentation because using this strategy implies that they have greater control over staff members. From the beginning to the end, the firm takes complete control because it is directly responsible for the augmented staff’s job, not forgetting their integration with the in-house team.
Frequently Asked Questions About benefits of staff augmentation
What is the purpose of staff augmentation?
The purpose of staff augmentation is to use temporary staffers to fill demanding short-term job positions within a business, company, or organization. This outsourcing model can help augment your organization’s capacity, thus responding to the business objectives effectively.
What is staff augmentation, and how does it work?
Staff augmentation is a cooperation model where companies temporarily hire one or multiple outsourcing IT specialists to expand their in-house staff. After becoming a part of your in-house team, augmented specialists cooperate with your internal workers for a short time, as usual.
Is staff augmentation important?
Yes! Staff augmentation is essential because it lets you shop around for that one expert who can fill your exact need. And you don’t have to commit long-term with that skill set. The staff augmentation philosophy helps many companies put the best professionals in a room, virtual or in-person, to troubleshoot problems while delivering prompt, innovative solutions on a budget.
What is staff augmentation in consulting?
Staff augmentation in consulting is when a business hires another company to fill out gaps in its staff. The process of staff augmentation in consulting is as simple as calling a staff augmentation firm, discussing your project with them, and giving them time to find suitable personnel to handle your project. The last step entails the identified specialists coming and working in your office. But there are some differences between the two.
Final Remarks
Undoubtedly, staff augmentation is an excellent strategy for getting things done to your specifications. The cooperation model can help businesses of all sizes carry out their operations correctly and on a budget. If your business is a startup, you are one step closer to benefiting from staff augmentation. Contact the experts in the staff augmentation field to help you get your company off to a good start.
References:
“When we consider the massive expenses associated with the recruiting/training/maintenance process of a whole department, we can see why this is a major worry for business owners.” – Forbes Quote https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/11/18/it-staff-augmentation-a-unique-talent-option-for-startups/?sh=a7d38ab6f62e
Types of Employee Benefits https://careerwise.minnstate.edu/jobs/benefittypes.html
What is temporary employment? https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/non-standard-employment/WCMS_534826/lang–en/index.htm
