Thanks to the digital technology progress, businesses can reduce operational costs and improve their efficiency in many ways. Take staff augmentation, for example. Timely cooperation with people from all over the world can save projects. Say, a new solution requires a Java architect. Well, staff augmentation will let you hire one from the opposite side of the continent and say goodbye as soon as their work is done. Perfect. That’s why more and more businesses turn to staff augmentation as the most competitive staffing solution currently available in the IT world. Read on to learn how the staff augmentation delivery model can boost your project development.

What is the Staff Augmentation Model?

Staff augmentation means employing remote professionals with a particular set of skills to complete an in-house team. It differs from the outsourcing model, where the project is handled by remote specialists entirely. The concept of the staff augmentation model implicates that additional professionals join the project and operate as one team with your in-house employees.

Why Choose Staff Augmentation?

The model offers numerous advantages. First of all, this process is cost-effective. Finding and hiring an employee with the needed set of skills is pricey, stressful and time-consuming. Sometimes, it’s nearly impossible. But by turning to staff augmentation, you get a chance to find the best talents you need precisely when you need them, regardless of the location.

Staff augmentation makes scaling your business easier as well. You can increase or decrease the number of people working on your project hassle-free. What’s more, staff augmentation lets companies handle risks better. You can deal with unexpected workload issues, complex tasks and other unforeseen turns of events faster and more effectively. When you have augmented staff ready to jump in and manage the avalanche of tasks that are coming your way, it’s much easier to balance the in-house team workload. After all, overstressed employees rarely show their best results.

What are the Traps and Pitfalls of Staff Augmentation?

Sadly, staff augmentation is not a cure-all. Sure, this model has a lot of advantages and can rescue your business when implemented skilfully and timely. Yet, we want to be honest with you regarding the disadvantages this approach has. We will also suggest how to deal with them or prevent them from emerging.

First, staff augmentation is not a moment’s work. The search of a perfect candidate with the right set of skills requires some time, effort and experience. In most cases, however, the efforts are much smaller compared to hiring a full-time employee to join the in-house team.

What’s more, you might need to spend some time training even the most perfect of augmented staff candidates. Familiarizing the candidate with your company’s business processes, work principles and tools might take a while. To save time, determine the scope of the learning process beforehand and eliminate every residual aspect from it.

Next, managing both in-house employees and augmented staff successfully requires some extra resources. You should be able to balance both kinds of team members equally well. To succeed in doing so, make sure to settle all the terms and conditions of cooperation with the augmented staff before the work starts.

And the last, but not least. Sometimes it’s about you, not them. If your team has some unsolved internal issues that slow down and decline productivity, an augmented staff employee will be affected by these issues as well. To get the most of staff augmentation, polish your business processes first.

How to Implement Staff Augmentation for Your Business?

Staff augmentation terms and conditions depend on the requirements and peculiarities of a given project. So does the cost, time and effort you will need to put into getting your staff augmentation processes up and running. Still, it’s possible to set a roadmap of the staff augmentation model implementation.

Main Steps of Implementing Staff Augmentation Into Your Project

Define project team gaps that require specialized skills.

Prepare an exhaustive job description for the potential augmented staff members.

Perform a general and a technical interview with the candidates.

Choose the candidates that fit your project requirements best.

Settle the terms and conditions with the prospect augmented staff members.

Sign the contract and a non-disclosure agreement (if you need one).

Introduce the augmented staff to the team and run training.

Manage the augmented staff operation in sync with the in-house team operation.

You have to clearly define staff augmentation roles and responsibilities from the very start to avoid any confusion along the way.

Final Thoughts

Staff augmentation is the new black in the IT industry. It can be applied to all kinds of businesses, big or small, local or international. It can help companies solve the hiring issues, save costs and boost their overall productivity. To reap all the benefits offered by the staff augmentation model, you have to be able to manage the mixed project team well. It is also a must to have well-established business operation processes before thinking of staff augmentation. But if your business has great growth potential and your team consists of highly skilled technical professionals, the staff augmentation model could be the right fit for you.