All Business leaders are somewhere guilty of putting extended number of hours strategizing, mobilizing and getting things on the run while their sub-ordinates (literally and metamorphically the right hand) take care of the essential task of delegation.
Perhaps, this is why Staff Augmentation is one practice that is heavily adopted in this digital century to increase the bandwidth of ongoing processes and projects without much hassles.
Just for the sake for starters, some of the noted benefits of staff augmentation are:
- Hiring a specific skill-set to trouble-shoot an issue
- Adding value and speed to the ongoing project
- Smoothening peaks and valleys in the enterprise’s journey
- A good trial-run for potential full-time employees
But that’s just some parts of it. Let us delve deep into what makes Staff Augmentation the over-used word of the corporate arsenal in current times.
What exactly is Staff-Augmentation?
As organizations increasingly take their work on global platforms, requirement for contingent workforce has automatically becomes a norm for most companies. Staff Augmentation is the practice of crossing organizational borders in order to bring in fresh ideas, thoughts and blood into the vacant spaces of the current model to propel energy into the entire system.
“Staff augmentation is the use of outside personnel on a temporary basis to augment the capacity of your organization.”
Staff augmentation has slowly garnered the reputation of global staffing industry and currently stands at $490 billion in annual spend. Also, freelancing which is yet another powerful source of augmentation is slowly climbing up the ladder of filling in important roles in company’s processes. It is highly expected that its number will slowly grow in the next decade.
Pros and Cons of Staff-Augmentation
Staff Augmentation is a business strategy that comes at the leverage of modern digital age and like all strategies, it comes with its set of pros and cons.
Though, the pros of staff augmentation come at a much-added benefit but it’s cons cannot be denied entirely either. This is the reason why there are several ways in which staff augmentation can be applied within the organization as per their needs. This shall be discussed within the upcoming blogs.
For now, we shall be discussing 3 essential considerations and misunderstandings that we ought to look after when applying staff augmentation within the organization.
3 considerations
#1 Project Length
Staff augmentation is typically employed in case of short-term projects as opposed to the long ones. Though, enterprises can count on hiring contingent workers on longer projects provided they are willing to negotiate on certain agreements and negotiation.
#2 Secrecy
Projects of clandestine nature involve critical intellectual property that should be guarded with utmost secrecy. For the sake of psychological comforts and hard evidence, usually an agreement is signed between the contractor and a full-time employee. This is done to save essential data leaks that can otherwise run into headlines if not guarded properly. For top secret projects, the organizations must proceed with high level of scrutiny.
#3 Ramp-up time
Ramp-up time should never be ignored in the equation. Even if the project is highly complex, the ramp-up time should remain well within the limits otherwise the organization is only likely to lose money.
3 misunderstanding
#1 Cost-Avoidance
If a full-time employee can come up with the same solution as an augmented staff then such benefit costs should be avoided.
#2 Not running into expenses
Usually employees come with the interesting argument of augmented staff being too expensive, which is why keeping a full-time employee is always a better option. Before signing the contract, both the parties should take everything into consideration, especially the costs. In the end, hiring augmented staff should not run extra money out of your pockets.
#3 Staff Augmentation Vs Managed service
Since staff augmentation is a pretty new concept in the industry, the terms staff augmentation and managed services are quite muddled-up.
While, managed services gravitate more towards quality ratings, augmented staffing system is material based and works on job description.
COVID-19 outbreak has drastically changed the working dynamics of many companies. Many are jumping on the bandwagon of staff-augmentation either out of choice or dire necessity. This technique guarantees availability, quality and reliability along with flexible solutions and business managers often look for.
Sumeru Inc. certainly champions the task of staff augmentation as they applied it way before it was vogue in the marketing world. We guarantee reduced costs and escalated quality work that would otherwise be incurred at a much higher price on in-house recruiting.
