Staff Augmentation: A powerful Strategy For Any Organization’s Arsenal

In recent years technology has paved a path for a lot of start-up companies to gain the attention of people around the world in a short time. But most of the start-ups today are facing a shortage of tech talent, not only start-ups, even established companies are looking for offshore vendors and remote developers. Companies are looking for particular technology experts who can handle certain specific tasks and thereby enhancing the overall capabilities of their in-house development team. Earlier organizations used to outsource certain projects to various vendors and get the task done and integrate that results with the in-house project. But today the scenario has changed instead of outsourcing the complete project, companies are looking for a staff augmentation solution, where they can have complete control on the project resources, management process and milestone deliveries.

Today, most IT companies are using the IT staff augmentation model to accomplish their goals for less time and money.

But what does staff augmentation really mean? How does it work?  and various other common questions are still foggy for a lot of people who are new to exploring Staff Augmentation Services. In this article, we will discuss all staff augmentation from what it is, how it works, to its benefits.

What Is Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation is nothing but a flexible outsourcing strategy that allows organizations to hire technology experts from around the world and manage the organization’s augmented team directly. Organizations can choose from the candidates that fit their requirements and have the flexibility of extending or cutting down their augmented team whenever they need to.

IT staff augmentation vendors like Locuz will help organizations to add skilled technical resources to their in-house team on either a short-term or long-term basis. Staff augmentation vendor directly hires these resources, this helps organizations in cutting down the costs incurred for full-time hires. The resources hired through a staff augmentation vendor are dedicated to one project at a time.

How does it work?

Let’s understand how this model works. For instance, if you are planning to take up a project with certain time lines and if you’re in house resources or skill sets aren’t enough to deliver the project and you don’t want to outsource the project or even a single module. Then looking for a staff augmentation service is a holy grail in this situation, wherein you don’t have to lose project control and it is a cost optimization model too.

Following are the set of steps that are needed in a successful staff augmentation:

Requirements Gathering

Requirement gathering is the most common first step in any of the projects, just like how before starting to search for the right candidates, it is important to figure out the required skillsets and expertise level and the number of resources required. It is also important to have a plan on how many days or hours are required to complete the project.

Select the right Staff Augmentation Vendor:

After you have a clear plan on required resources, look for a good vendor who is experienced in providing resources pertaining to the technology which you are looking for. A good vendor can provide end-to-end support throughout the project execution.

Review and Selection

Once you have properly understood the requirement and finalized the vendor. Initiate the search process. Here the vendor will help you evaluate the candidate’s profile. The vendor is also responsible to align interviews. Once, all the screening processes are completed and a few right candidates are lined up, you have the liberty to hire the right candidate, basis your requirement and budget.

Integration of New Team Members

Just by making the selected candidate sign the contract, doesn’t mean the process is completed. You must make sure that the new candidates are properly aligned with the existing employees who are working on a particular project. It is also important that you must make sure that all the new employees are getting to know about your company’s procedures, processes, rules, and values. You must ensure that they are comfortable in their new workplace.

Persistent support and nurture

After the integration process is done, ongoing support is a must, both the vendor and the organization are responsible to support and encourage the candidate in such a way that they are motivated and focused towards the timely completion of the project.

Benefits of Staff Augmentation

1. Reduced time spent on recruitment

Recruitment is a time-consuming process and requires a lot of effort from the in-house HR team; right from job listings to shortlisting, interviewing and evaluating the candidates, and then closing in on a candidate. If anything goes wrong during the process, everything has to be repeated from the beginning.

But this is not the case with staff augmentation, the staffing agency will take the responsibility of evaluating candidates and present you with the right set of candidates who can justify your project requirements. It is a matter of days for the staff augmentation vendors to add a staff member to your existing team for project-basis.

2. Access to the experts

Staff augmentation vendors make it easy to find expert talent to work on your project. And with this service, you are able to access the technology experts from a global repository.

Staff augmentation enables access to industry experts and also lowers the training and development efforts that are needed to bring the resource up to speed when working on the project.

3. Lowering of operational cost

Staff augmentation is a cost-effective model, it not only eliminates the cost incurred on recruiting full-time employees but also cuts the additional operational costs. The employees hired through this service are paid only on a project basis, therefore escaping payment of full-time wages during the time when the project is not ongoing.

Apart from regular payment, you can also save on some other additional costs such as insurance and other perks that need to be provided when hiring full-time, all these costs are borne by the staffing provider.

4. Higher project control

As discussed earlier, unlike outsourcing, staff augmentation allows you to have complete control over the project. It is quite beneficial for the project on a long-term basis as there is better control over the final outcome and the quality of the project.

5. Increased flexibility which facilitates scalability

The staff augmentation model allows you to easily upsize and downsize the workforce without any risk.  When a project demands, you can easily extend your existing staff with fresh resources without having to hire full-time and then lay off employees.

Staff Augmentation the right way With Locuz!

Locuz  is a well-established brand and is amongst the prominent players in the staffing business in India with a PAN India presence. Our years of domain experience and practice complement our staffing business through cross-skilling and technology enablement for employees across business divisions. With various growth options, we ensure to attract the best of talent and have lower than industry attrition standards.