Several recruitment methods have been discovered, from hiring part-time or full-time employees, to seasonal and project-based needs of businesses. Given that staffing needs to be balanced for your business to successfully thrive in the industry, owners must ensure that there are sufficient employees responsible for filling in the roles for certain business aspects. While overstaffing burdens the company itself, shortages can overwhelm current employees, leaving them overworked and burned out. For this reason, staff augmentation is being implemented across businesses. It is a good recruitment method to fill the gaps in a workforce, all while maintaining the quality that the business provides to its clients and customers.
Staff augmentation is a cost-effective solution, an innovative approach for filling temporary and permanent positions within the business. Moreover, it eliminates the need for office space and other overhead costs connected with traditional staffing techniques. And, because businesses are no longer bound by geography, you can find skilled professionals, and assign jobs accordingly. It enables businesses to select only those candidates who meet their needs and to downsize or expand their augmented teams as needed.
Given that most businesses opt to hire employees across organizations globally, staff augmentation is not relatively a new process. It is similar to outsourcing techniques involving the acquisition of qualified employees from outside your company to temporarily or permanently cover open roles in your team. Thus, considered as a perfect strategy for businesses who need staff to fill in for their seasonal or project-based needs.
Staff augmentation is then an excellent way for businesses to cut expenses while increasing production and efficiency. Before you implement this model, you must first understand what it entails, its applications, benefits, and how to work effectively with an augmented workforce.
Essence to Business
Staff augmentation allows you to create a flexible workforce that can easily scale up or down based on workload, as well as staff up for new opportunities. Temporary workers and contractors, for instance, can help you fulfill the demands of your business without the expense of hiring full-time staff, especially if you are experiencing a seasonal boost in sales or need to replace positions created by attrition.
Types of Staff Augmentation
There are actually numerous options available for accurate staff augmentation talent. And the organization’s specific needs determines the suitable and appropriate solution. These options include short-term and long-term staff augmentation. The short-term option began integrated particularly when there is a short-term need for employees. Also, when they need to accomplish a certain project and in-house employees are unavailable. This is the most common one, given that they are easy and accessible solutions for these types of business issues. With the long-term one, on the other hand, they are applied when the project is longer, and there is a need to cover a skill gap or decrease operating costs.
There are three other principal types of staff augmentation — commodity, skill-based, and highly-skilled. When you need a trustable workforce, and does not necessarily possess a specific skill set, this refers to the commodity type. The circumstances for this form of staff augmentation are more urgent than mastering certain talents. As a result, this form may include manual labor, manufacturing work, or retail jobs, among other things.
For the skill-based type of staff augmentation, it requires a bit more skill. But the level of skill for it is not demanding. It only requires employees certain basic skills such as typing, spreadsheet use, and being multilingual, but its relative level of skill is not that critical. This form, thus, may include clerical work, data processing, transcription, and basic copywriting. Lastly, with the highly-skilled one, it requires more advanced skills that are only obtainable through significant training and experience. Thus, the level of skill in this type of staff augmentation is important.
Benefits of Staff Augmentation
Reduces the Recruitment Time
Planning and organizing the recruitment process takes a lot of time and resources. You must write a job description and post it on multiple employment boards. You will also spend time interviewing and shortlisting individuals. If you happen to hit a rock during this process, you will have to stop and restart it. And thus, with staff augmentation, you would not have to go through a lengthy recruitment process. You are able to streamline them and make it easier on both ends.
Access to a Talented Pool of Experts
Staff augmentation allows you to make use of both internal and external resources, as well as identify and remedy gaps. Experts contribute expertise and experience to your projects, which reduces the time you need to spend on training and retraining.
Moreover, you only get to choose whatever skills and technical knowledge you want candidates to have. Staffing firms do not waste time recommending workers who lack the necessary expertise. You can choose from a global talent pool of remote software developers in the outsourcing market. It implies you can work with specialists from all over the world.
Enhanced Flexibility and Scalability
With a staff augmentation strategy, you can quickly scale up and down your team. That’s the level of flexibility and scalability you will be getting from the model. It makes a lot more sense to supplement your existing workforce rather than recruiting full-time experts and then laying them off later, which does not reflect well on your brand. Moreover, it allows you to reduce headcount during slow periods while adding extra support when needed. This helps you strike a balance between your current workload and your staffing expenditures, at any given time.
Quality on a Budget
Paying full-time employees may be an unnecessary additional cost. Especially if you are just starting up your business venture. To boost employee satisfaction levels, you will provide logistics, allowances, and bonuses. However, with the staff augmentation strategy, you can save money by recruiting highly-skilled employees who will provide the same quality and amount of work for a fraction of the cost over time. It cost-effectively fills gaps in your workforce, without the expense of actually associating with hiring full-time employees.
Key Takeaway
The integration of staff augmentation processes is a growing trend in the workplace, as more businesses have been using this model, creating and maintaining flexible, scalable talent. Also, considered as one of the effective solutions for organizations in diminishing prices. All while holding essential resources in supporting business productivity. Furthermore, companies are seeing the value of a fresh set of eyes on critical operations such as training and employee engagement. These characteristics, taken together, present a positive picture of the future of staff augmentation.