Hiring in-house I.T experts may take a lot of time, especially the middle to senior level experts. So in cases where you need a specialist as soon as possible, the normal recruiting process may not be ideal for you. In this case you will need a different model known as staff augmentation which will help you hire the person you require faster. Let’s dig deeper to further understand what staff augmentation entails and benefits it will bring to your business.

What is staff augmentation?

This is a model of recruiting staff where a company temporarily hires or outsources an I.T specialist for a particular project. An augmented specialist becomes a company’s employee for a short period of time.

A good example is when you have an internal CRM system that you wish to update but your team doesn’t have the necessary specialist to reengineer such a product. You therefore outsource a specialist to get the job done instead of going through the normal traditional recruiting process which may take time.

When to use staff augmentation

Staff augmentation will fit you if you:

• Have an in-house team

You have to already have an in-house team that you seek to expand and fill the expertise gap in. The in-house team should already be competent but only lacking in the expertise you require at the moment.

• Have a tech-savvy manager on your side

When you apply the augmentation model, the management will still be on your side. You stay fully in charge of the project management and team management. This means you will need to have both a good and tech-savvy manager.

• Need to expand the team fast

If you need an expert in for example IoT or one with deep knowledge in healthcare software development or something else specific, you will search for a while before getting them. This is where staff augmentation comes in and saves you time. You will just need to contact a vendor, look through their developers CVs and identify one who will suit you.

• Need people with high level skills

Software engineering skills take time, training and experience to develop and perfect. Since team augmentation rarely includes junior developers you are most likely going to get the services of an experienced developer or engineer to your project.

Benefits of staff augmentation

Staff augmentation has many benefits, below are some of them:

• The recruitment cycle is shorter

Hiring new staff is a tedious process that can take months, especially when you are looking highly-skilled candidates. Staff augmentation on the other hand reduces the recruitment time to even days as augmentation specialists have vast and updated databases with talents you can choose from. Moreover, the outsourcing company for local or international hiring will do for you the recruitment, background checks, hiring and even payroll.

• Lower development costs

The biggest benefit of having a remote team is cost saving. Costs like office space, equipment, taxes among others are either scrapped or lowered translating to an overall reduction in the costs you will incur for development. Importantly, according to remote work statistics at least 74% of business owners are on the move to shift some of their workforces to start working remotely.

Good read: Pricing Models for IT Staff Augmentation

• Less legal hustles

Hiring an employee comes with its fair share of paperwork and legal responsibilities. But when using staff augmentation, the outsourcing company will be the one to take care of all the legal responsibilities and paperwork.

• Overcoming geological limitations

Staff augmentation offers a solution to geological limitations by giving you access to specialists located in different nations without you having to search for them. You get a specialist you may not find in your region or country.

• High Flexibility

For start-ups, augmentation will provide the much needed flexibility. They can scale up and down based on their present requirements. So they are not tied to employees that may be surplus at certain times when the workflow is low.

• Sustained authority

Staff augmentation ensures management control still remains with the company so as to shape the project in the way they desire. As opposed to project outsourcing, staff augmentation enables the parent business to be the one in charge of making the final call.

• Expansion and adaptation

Businesses can now leverage this hiring model to scale their business on a trail model without having to invest on a full-fledged work force. This enables the business to be able to put up with the inconsistent nature of the market to scale up and down depending on the situation.

• Leverage new concepts

Having a specific set of employees for a long period of time may cause stagnation as far as opinions and creativity are concerned. This may be a major obstacle to business development and revenue growth. Staff augmentation however, brings in new mindsets with different ideas that your company can leverage on

Key things you must know about staff augmentation

Let’s look at a few crucial things you must put into consideration when you decide to use the staff augmentation model:

• NDA and intellectual property protection

You have to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the staff outsourcing firm to ensure your intellectual property rights are safe. You should also be alive to the fact that your remote developers can access your confidential information once they become your full time developers. So you must put measures in place to ensure they don’t misuse the information.

• The outsourcing company is the official employer of augmented staff

No matter how long the outsourced staff will work for you, they still remain the official employees of the outsourcing company. The contract should therefore be clear on the areas of responsibility of each party and both parties agree on working terms like off-day’s vacations and other work related issues.

• Transparent monthly fee

The outsourcing company should charge a flat monthly fee that should transparently include the developer’s monthly salary and the company’s commission for the service.

Conclusion

Staff augmentation offers I.T companies and start-ups with several benefits like flexibility, shorter recruitment cycle, and lower development costs among others as we have discussed in this article. To get a specialist in a given field with no geographical limitation it’s the ideal way to follow. But while at it keep in mind considerations such as signing of NDAs so as to ensure your sensitive information remains safe.

Finally, connect with offshore outsourcing company if you need more information about staff augmentation