What is Staff Augmentation? How It Can Bring Your Business To The Next Level?

In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses must adapt quickly. Over 70% of companies now outsource tech solutions, with staff augmentation being a top choice for its flexibility and effectiveness. This approach allows organizations to bring in skilled professionals as needed, addressing immediate innovation and project needs.

With 65% of IT leaders citing skill shortages as a major barrier, staff augmentation is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. This blog will explore its importance, compare it to traditional hiring, and highlight key types of IT staff augmentation essential for success. We’ll also discuss how flexible staffing solutions boost team capabilities and drive tech-driven goals.

What is Staff Augmentation?

What does staff augmentation mean? Staff augmentation is a strategy of hiring external professionals to fill skill gaps or increase capacity for a project or a business objective. It allows the organization to control and manage the augmented staff as if they are their own employees, but with lower costs and liabilities.

In more simple words “Staff augmentation is a way for companies to add extra workers temporarily to help with their projects without hiring them permanently. This helps fill in skills they need for a short time.”

To use staff augmentation, you need to analyze your project and identify the skills that you require. Then, you can hire highly experienced and talented professionals who match your project needs.

By collaborating with the augmented staff, your team can produce innovative solutions and result in market-ready products. Staff augmentation helps you bridge the knowledge silos and reach your goals faster and more efficiently.

Types of Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation can be classified into three main categories, based on the level of expertise and the nature of the tasks required. These classifications help organizations decide the best fit for their project needs and objectives.

1. Commodity-based augmentation involves hiring personnel for tasks that don’t require a specialized skill set. This approach is suitable for roles that necessitate general technical knowledge without the need for advanced expertise. It’s ideal for projects that require additional manpower but not necessarily niche skills or high-level decision-making.

2. Skill-based augmentation refers to the engagement of staff with specific technical abilities or knowledge. These individuals are often sought after for projects that require a certain level of technical skill but not necessarily the highest level of expertise in the field. It’s a balance between having technical competence and being cost-effective for the company.

3. Highly-skilled augmentation targets the top-tier of expertise, bringing in professionals who are leaders in their specific areas of technology. This type of augmentation is crucial for projects that demand cutting-edge skills, innovation, or specialized knowledge that is not readily available within the organization. It’s often used for critical projects, research and development, or when a company is looking to implement new technologies.

Each type of IT staff augmentation offers distinct advantages, from filling quick needs for manpower to bringing in highly specialized expertise for innovative projects. Understanding the requirements of the project at hand is crucial in selecting the most appropriate type of staff augmentation.

When do you need Staff Augmentation?

When you want to extend your team by hiring program developers for your team is working. You need to hire a group of 4-7 tech professionals, but it’s impossible due to the shortage of local talent in the market. Also, the local recruitment will take a lot of time, and due to high demand in the market, this option is not practical.

Suppose You are developing a product with your team, and you want to hire new professionals for your team. As you know that there is a shortage of these professionals, you can broaden your search to other sites.

You can also hire professionals through Outsourcing companies, but this may not suit you for various reasons. First, you cannot communicate with them daily, and second is that you cannot form a strong bond with them so that they feel like part of your local team. These factors are essential for small team integration for the local team.

How Does It Work?

To understand resource and staff augmentation, we have defined the entire process in the following steps below:

Step 1- Identify your requirements

Before starting your hiring process, make sure to have all the facts, goals, priorities, and potential problems in mind. Define your requirements properly while publishing the job description. It would be best to define the skills, qualifications, and years of experience you want in your candidate.

Step 2- Screening process

After understanding your requirements, you can easily select the top candidates that meet all your needs. You can conduct interviews to shortlist the best candidates or arrange video conferences for the interview.

Now you can choose the candidate that will be an excellent fit for your business and team.

Step 3- Background check

After selecting your preferred candidate, you must check their references and background while simultaneously completing all the contractual formalities.

Step 4- Welcoming new team members

People think that signing a contract with the new candidates leads to the end of all the hard work. But that’s not true. Ensure that your new employees know about your company’s procedures, processes, rules, and values. You make sure that they are comfortable in their new workplace.

Step 5- Constant support and nurture

After integrating your new team members with your existing team, you must give your total support to the new staff. It helps to make your relationship stronger and build effective and efficient cooperation.

Benefits of Staff Augmentation

High Productivity 

Staff augmentation leads to higher productivity because developers focus on a single task rather than multiple tasks. On the other hand, the outsourced team can manage several projects simultaneously. Working for a client also gives motivation and dedication for doing work productively.

IP Rights Security

By collaborating with your dedicated developers, you will have all IP rights from the start.

Flexibility

Staff augmentation provides flexibility; that’s why it is an excellent choice for any business, irrespective of its size. It reduces cost, reduces the workload of your existing team, it provides the small workforce with great effectiveness.

Economical

Staff augmentation is cost-effective due to its transparent cost structure. You can save your money by cutting down expenses like work stationery, office space, providing health insurance, etc.

Better Control

As compared to Outsourcing, Staff augmentation provides you total control over the project. When you outsource your project, you cannot monitor the progress of your project.

But with staff augmentation, you can monitor your employees and your project whenever you want. It also helps you to reduce the risk of security.

How to make your Staff Augmentation effective?

The demand for qualified developers is growing faster than ever. In this environment, staff augmentation becomes more and more popular. To make effective use of staff augmentation, you have to follow some best practices:

Open Communication

Communicate your goals, strategies, expectations openly with your augmented staff before signing any contract. According to the article of Salesforce, 86% of executives mention that the primary reason for project failure is a lack of communication. Use tools like Slack, Teams, Skype, or Trello to communicate.

The more you speak with your professional, the less likely you are to avoid mistakes.

Define Your Principal Values

It is necessary to define your principal values with the external developer. It will help set the right expectations, and it helps him to fit properly in your team.

If your development is according to plan, it becomes even more manageable for your partner to fill openings during high demand.

Hold Project Management Tools

Use project management tools like Zoho Projects, Asana, Monday.com, Proofhub, etc., to get the most out of your extended development team. These apps will help you to track your project’s progress at every development stage.

You can also use AI-based tools to evaluate team performance, manage sprints, complaint management, etc. They can also provide a complete view of your team’s productivity and integrate your tasks successfully.

Encourage Documentation

Make sure to use documentation-driven development that works for your existing team, which also includes augmented staff. Tools like Bit.ai, Github, Doxygen, etc., help let your team document and their codes handy.

If you want to expand your team, your new team member will easily find the documentation. If you choose to extend your team in the future, which may require you to pass the code, it will be easier for your new team members to find the documentation.

Cost of IT Staff Augmentation

You can hire IT professionals, at hourly and monthly rates. The cost can vary according to your project. So let’s discuss the prices in different countries:

In Nut Shell

Whether you need a developer or a team, staff augmentation is the best way to enhance your business growth. It helps you to reduce cost, save time, provide flexibility, etc. This method also helps in improving business capabilities or filling gaps left by members on extended leave. 

Having an augmented staff allows them to focus on the management of the project without worrying about other tasks. Of course, it will involve some on-the-job training, and team chemistry is fundamental in the decision. Still, the right staffing agency like Invedus will efficiently add the right skilled people to any team.