Staff augmentation is an outsourcing strategy to hire dedicated tech talent globally. It is a flexible process that allows you to choose from the candidates that fit your requirements. You can also cut or extend your augmented team whenever needed. Staff augmentation fixes the scarcity of tech talents in startups and established companies. This process help you add skilled technical support to your team and help manage specific tasks. Hence, staff augmentation enhances the overall capabilities of the in-house team. Nowadays, many startup companies use this outsourcing method to achieve their goals. Staff Augmentation also allows the companies to keep total control over their project resources and management.
How does staff augmentation work?
Staff augmentation company provides highly qualified and skilled employees to help you meet all project goals and objectives. It is quite a famous process that helps IT businesses to grow their teams with bearing any extra cost. You can hire professionals on a contractual basis rather than hiring them permanently. They work in collaboration with the non-technical and technical internal staff for the entire duration of a project. They have the provision of work from their home or workplace. Before hiring an external resource, you have to evaluate the current members of the team. Staff augmentation involves all the concepts like staff outsourcing, resource augmentation, FTE, project outsourcing, resource outsourcing, etc. Let’s break the augmentation process into steps:
- Identify your requirements: The first thing to do is to identify what exactly you are looking for? You have to find out the resource person you require and define a precise number of resources you want. You should be clear about candidate specifications like qualifications, experience, skills, etc.
- Review and selection: After defining the requirements clearly, the next step is to start the search process. You may get many candidates that suit your requirements. You can conduct interviews and tests to ensure that they are eligible to work for you.
- Integration of new team members: Your responsibility does not end with the signing of a contract. You must provide the necessary support for the successful integration of your new employees. You should maintain good communication with them, make them aware of the company’s procedures, processes, rules and values. Get in touch with them to ensure they are comfortable with their workplace.
- Persistent support and nurture: Once the contract phase is over, you must ask for feedbacks and establish strong relationships to ensure efficient cooperation.
Benefits of Staff augmentation
- High Productivity level: This process ensures 100 per cent focused productivity level as they are working on a single project. But a project outsourcing team has to manage different projects simultaneously. Staff augmentation helps professionals to work for one client. They follow only one goal at a time, which in turn means higher levels of dedication.
- Boosts the recruitment cycle: Looking for superior and qualified candidates can be a tedious process. You can easily deal with this through staff augmentation organisations. They will help you find the right professionals within weeks or even days. These organisations have refreshed databases that have extensive pool tech talents. The staff augmentation organisations deal with recruitments, background checks, hiring and payroll.
- Lower development cost: The biggest and the most obvious benefit of building a remote team is cost savings. As compared to the US and Western European countries, recruiting resources from Eastern Europe and Asian countries, cost less. They would demand fewer salaries as the cost of living. This will result in a massive amount of savings.
- Less Legal hassles: Hiring employees comes with a lot of legal paperwork’s which includes payroll, taxes, employee benefits and many more. But in staff augmentation, the outsourcing organisation deals with the legal process and makes the process hassle-free for you.
- Overcomes geological limitations: You may not be able to find the right professionals from your locality. Staff augmentation finds you needed specialists from different nations.
- Sustained Authority: Staff augmentation gives you control over management, unlike the project outsourcing that transfers the entire project work to an external unit. This enables companies with management control to shape the project in their desired way. This prevents diminishing the role of the parent businesses in the execution and management of projects.
- Leverage new concepts: Sticking to the same set of employees for a longer period can result in a lack of opinions and creativity. This can negatively affect your business development. IT Staff augmentation motivates startups and businesses to work with a diverse set of employees. These help companies in leveraging a set of new ideas and concepts.
Different aspects of staff augmentation
- NDA and intellectual property protection: You must ensure that your confidential information does not get misused. It can be used by the outsourcing firm or the hired professional if not taken care of. You must agree with them to ensure the safety of your intellectual property.
- The outsourcing company is the official employer: The outsourcing company is the official employer of remote developers. So, you have to define areas of responsibility for each party in the contract. This ensures that both parties agree on working terms.
- Transparent monthly fee: The outsourcing organisation will charge a flat monthly fee for each employee they provide. The fee will include the salary of the hired professional and company’s commission.
