Staff Augmentation: The Right Way
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 staff augmentation really mean? How does it work? These are the common questions people ask who are new to this concept. 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 organizations 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 a certain timeline and if your in house resources or skillset isn’t enough to accomplish it 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
Requirements gathering is the most common phase in any of the software projects, just as that before starting to search for 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 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 search process. Conduct interviews, upon all the screening process, are done hire the right candidates.
Integration of New Team Members
Just by making the selected candidate sign the contract, doesn’t mean the process is done. 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 on the project.
Benefits of Staff Augmentation
1. Reduced time spent on recruitment
Recruitment is a time-consuming process and a lot of effort from the HR team is needed right from job listings to shortlisting, interviewing, and evaluating the candidates. 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 Upsizing and downsizing 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.
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 complements 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.
Mounika Raghavarpu is a technical writer and marketing designer who has Technical acumen in industry-leading technologies and specialized IN Writing and Editing Operational Procedures and Manuals. Her creativity and ability to think of new ideas made her a part of Digital Marketing to devise and execute marketing communications. She loves to design marketing collateral, business presentations and branding material for digital publications and social media.
Apart from being a technical writer, she loves painting, enjoys playing with her kid and watching movies in her free time.