What is IT Staff Augmentation and how to go about it?

Fill workforce gap with global recruitment

Facing gaps in your development team or other staff? Staff augmentation can help you fill it up with technically sound resources as per the needs of your organization. Today, it is easier to hire resources from different locations because you have plenty of candidates from developing countries who usually look for such opportunities. The add on is, you can also hire freelancers for a specific project or the entire team that will work dedicatedly to roll your project to market.

Save Project and Organization’s time

When it comes to in-house recruitment, there is a lot of hassle. By choosing an offshore team for your project, you can simply eliminate the process of individual in-house recruitment, resource background check, skill check, documentation work, etc. All you have to do to scale your team and get the job done is – find a good offshore service provider and leverage the resources that they have already recruited based on their skill set and could quickly get onboard merely by transferring project knowledge.

Complete ownership of team/staff

Staff expansion gives you control over the team and lets you decide who will lead the project and who will shift to a new role, etc. Moreover, you get a temporary team that works full-fledged for the project tenure.

Pay as per your needs

Resources can be hired according to the needs of the project. It is not at all important to recruit full-time employees which could prove to be pretty expensive. You can simply hire the resources for as long as the project demands and save money for other future projects.

Extra efforts to train resources

When you hire resources for full-time development work, you need to train them. The flip side of increasing staff in-house is you have to bear the cost of training and dedicate time to help the worker to come to terms with client expectations. This is feasible but honestly, needs more efforts from the organization to onboard new team members.

Operational Issues

Working with extended teams can be a hassle at times because it is a tedious process to make them understand your organization’s workflow. You will have to acquaint them with the working methods and introduce them to company policies.

Different Company Culture

Culture is an important aspect of motivating employees to give their 100% at work. However, new employees don’t have much time to understand the company’s culture. They are more focused on project completion however, understanding company culture helps you to deal with people better while working together. This could be more challenging when the projects are long-term and require knowledge of the company.

1. Within country staff augmentation

It is the model that works in the same country. The team is hired within the country limits, which gives the advantage of being familiar with the citizens’ behavior. This in turn helps make informed decisions. However, one thing that you will have to keep in mind is that it is a costly model and restricts the talent pool which can be outsourced from any other country at cheaper rates and with higher skills.

2. Nearshore staff augmentation

Nearshore staff augmentation refers to the model where the staff is scaled in a different country but in the same time zone. By going with this model, you get many options to pick from and you can take advantage of different perspectives as well. The more your talent pool is diversified, the better ideas you get to drive a project.

3. Offshore staff augmentation

Offshore staff augmentation is when the external team operates from a different country in a completely different timezone. It helps in exploring a vast talent pool at a remarkably low price. The only thing that could be a setback is the cultural or language difference. Other than that, the time zone differences can be of concern at times.

1. Check the staffing requirements

Staffing requirements could be multiple. Whether you want to increase your staff for internal process handling or developers to deliver a project? There could be ad hoc or planned demands like the requirement of a UI/UX designer, project manager, or PHP developer. It is essential to analyze the specific requirements your organization is demanding. Consult HRs and project managers to learn how many resources and expertise is lacking to plan your staff augmentation process accordingly.

2. Analyze the expertise of staffing model provider

You must make sure whatever service provider you are finalizing on, they are able to manage the challenges of augmenting staff. Get the history of vendors and analyze their credentials as well as work portfolio. Take feedback from the previous clients of the service providers to get an idea about their work.

3. Understand the contract

Search for vendors that are capable of providing customized work agreements to cater to all your needs perfectly. Apart from that, the service provider must take time to comprehend the working environment of your business. This ensures that you have the right partner to achieve your goals as per your requirements.

4. Examine the communication

Before finalizing on the service provider, make sure how they are handling accounts as well as general communications. Search for a staffing model provider that has clear communication protocols. It can be used to monitor and tailor the specific requirements of the business.

5. Network of the service provider

It is essential to get in touch with an experienced provider with relevant connections and infrastructure to support the team. Moreover, it should give you the authority to hire, recruit and manage staff as per your operational requirements. Staff augmentation becomes easy when the service provider has a good network locally and internationally. Therefore, choose wisely after thorough research to make operations smoother in the future.

#Staff augmentation is a costly deal

IT departments are difficult to sustain, however, augmenting staff or outsourcing is certainly more cost-effective. Augmentation of staff eliminates many other costs like employee retirement benefits, insurance, legal procedures, compensations, etc. When you choose an experienced and well-established firm for staff augmentation, their efficient recruitment process ensures the hiring of skilled resources with good practical experience. This way businesses can work on their core competencies and simultaneously get good staff.

#Technical Assistance and Staff Augmentation are same

This is a common misunderstanding that staff augmentation and technical support are the same thing. Staff augmentation is the process where skilled resources are added to the team to increase the efficiency of operations. On the other hand, technical assistance is a temporary support for which resources are recruited to develop a product or resolve service problems.

#Staff augmentation teams are difficult to manage

When you opt for staff augmentation, the teams are well trained to acclimatize to the new working environment and operations of the organization. It is a misconception that physical distance makes operations difficult. With good connectivity and frequent communications, staff augmentation can actually benefit more than one had thought because you get to leverage top talent.

There are many players in the market that guarantee smooth staff augmentation. If you don’t want to fall into the trap of unreliable services, do a background check first thing. When you go with the right service providers, you won’t even have to bother about the above misconceptions that align mostly with the poor staff augmentation services.