This outsourcing strategy can fill in the gaps without taxing your existing staff. Also known as team augmentation, staff augmentation is an attractive option for start-ups trying to get off the ground, as well as for established companies that need to enhance in-house teams with complementary skills.
IT staff augmentation in particular can fill talent shortages quickly and in a cost-effective manner. Let’s look at ways that team augmentation can help IT companies and their clients for a win-win outcome.
Get New Projects Off The Ground Quickly
Whether it’s a new project or a new direction for your business, you may not want to pull employees from their current projects to jump on something new. This can be disruptive to not only your staff, but your existing product lines and services as well.
It can also negatively impact your clients; they may not get the quality of service they’re used to if staff members are distracted by new assignments.
Instead of burdening existing staff and expending resources to train and shift gears, turn to IT staff augmentation. By outsourcing the work to experienced providers, you can get new projects off the ground quickly without interrupting ongoing projects and current schedules.
Bring In Temporary Staff For Short-Term Needs
In the IT world, needs occasionally materialize that require immediate allocation of resources. Again, it may not be prudent to pull people away from projects to address these urgent but short-term demands.
In these instances, a better strategy is to tap into resource and staff augmentation for as long as the pressing needs exist, without interrupting your existing workforce.
These are a few examples of instances when short-term needs arise and team augmentation can save the day:
- To replace a staff member during a temporary absence, such as maternity/paternity leave, sabbatical, vacation, sick leave, temporary disability, family leave, or other reasons
- During high-demand crunch times, when resources are stretched to the max and outside help is needed to stay on schedule
- To help during peak development times, when extra testing needs to be done, or when quality control measures need to be implemented
Turn To The Staff Augmentation Model For Long-Term Benefits
Of course, team augmentation offers long-term benefits as well. These are just some of the cases where you might want to use the staff augmentation model over the long haul:
- Bolster your in-house teams
- Enhance your company’s level of expertise in areas not covered by your in-house staff
- Create development extensions of your in-house dev teams
- Add to your company’s existing technological skill set
- Expand into new technology verticals with minimal cost or risk
Many IT companies that delve into staff augmentation for short-term projects continue to utilize this model on a more permanent basis because of the many benefits this approach brings.
Pass Cost Savings Along To Your Clients
A big reason that IT staff augmentation is a win-win for companies and their clients is the cost-effective measures that are built into this model. The cost savings enjoyed by the company can then be passed along to the clients.
These are some of the reasons that utilizing team augmentation can save an IT company money:
- The outsourced staff members have their own equipment and office space; you don’t need to invest funds into purchasing new equipment or expanding your facility to make room for new hires
- The staffing agency you’ll work with is responsible for making payments, so you won’t need to worry about added payroll-related costs
- A new full-time hire needs a health benefit package, but personnel who work for you via staff augmentation will not need you to provide these benefits
By making the most of the cost-efficient nature of this approach to hiring the help your company needs, you can reward your clients by offering lower, more competitive prices on the services and IT packages they purchase from you.
Protect Your Employees From Burnout
According to a Gallup report on employee burnout, most employees experience burnout at work. The report, released by Gallup in 2020, points out the following key insights and findings:
- Approximately 76% of employees experience burnout at some point
- Among those who experience burnout, 28% indicate they experience it very often or always
- A reduction in the number of hours worked is not always enough to solve the problem
- Employees who frequently experience burnout are 63% more likely to take a sick day
- These same employees are 23% more likely to end up in the emergency room
- Employee burnout risk increases significantly for those working 50+ hours per week
- How employees experience their workload has an even stronger influence on burnout than the number of hours worked
That last point is very telling. The report goes on to say that, when people have a measure of job flexibility, and when they feel supported, motivated, and inspired at work, they typically end up avoiding burnout.
These are important points to keep in mind when considering IT staff augmentation. After all, your employees are your most valuable resources. Without them, you don’t have a business. Taking care of them and giving them the support they need is crucial to their wellbeing and to the health of the firm.
Staff augmentation can be the right answer when you need more work done but you don’t want to simply pile it on top of your employees’ already full workloads. Outsourcing the jobs to individuals and teams looking for this sort of work can be a win-win for everyone involved.
Give Your Staff And Clients The Support They Need
We’ve touched upon the value of support in the previous section, and we’ll expand on that here.
Employees burn out when they’re not feeling supported at work and when they experience a significant level of burden associated with their workload.
As a business leader, whether you are the owner of the company, an executive, a branch manager, a department head, or a team leader, one of your obligations is to boost employee satisfaction. This can be a challenging role, but it comes with the territory.
One way you can support your IT employees and increase their level of work satisfaction is to employ staff augmentation to provide the support they need.
How you manage your teams is up to you, but one way to engage employees and help them feel more a part of the company is to encourage feedback. Ask the following questions, and demonstrate that you truly are open to receiving this feedback:
- What parts of the job does the employee enjoy?
- What parts is the employee struggling with?
- In the employee’s eyes, what’s missing from the department?
- If temporary (or long-term) help was brought in, what tasks should be offloaded to the new members?
Not only are you supporting your employees in this way, but you’re also gauging the need for IT staff augmentation.
Similarly, you can turn to team augmentation to support your clients. Perhaps your staff is so tied up with work that there aren’t enough resources to go around to help clients in need. Clients who need technical support may not be getting it because there’s nobody in your firm for them to turn to.
By bringing aboard more people to your company via IT staff augmentation, you can meet your clients’ needs without having to hire individuals full-time, and without having to burden your hardworking employees with additional customer-interacting tasks they may not be interested in or prepared for.
Expand Your IT Company’s Services
Your company provides much-needed services to your clients, but in the ever-changing IT landscape, there’s always room for growth. If you could expand your company’s offerings, you could bring in more business and serve even more clients.
However, you may not be in a position to spend the time, money, and effort required to train your current staff to provide new services. You also may not be in a position to hire a full-time specialist or two in these new areas.
It’s also possible that the new services you want to offer would be utilized by your clients only intermittently.
In all of these cases, staff augmentation could give you the freedom to expand your resources without having to expend a great deal of time or effort on hiring and training people.
Offer More In-House Support
Are your customers getting everything they need from your IT firm, or are they going to your competitors to find the support services your company isn’t yet providing?
If you’re frustrated by this but feel you and your team simply can’t take on any extra work, consider team augmentation. By bringing aboard people on an outsourced basis, you can offer your current clients the support they want but are finding elsewhere. Stop losing business to others; enhance your offerings through staff augmentation.
Access Hard-To-Find Specialized Skills
You know that you could do a lot more business if only you could provide your customers with certain skills that your current staff does not specialize in. What do you do? Once again, turning to the staff augmentation model could be the answer you seek.
If you don’t have certain skills in-house, you can still expand your business into areas that utilize these skills by expanding your team through staff augmentation. This benefits your IT business, because you now have access to the skill set needed to broaden your scope, and it benefits your clients, because they are now working with a more well-rounded company that can address more of their IT needs.
Additional IT Staff Augmentation Considerations
While IT staff augmentation may not solve all of your staffing needs, it can certainly help in a number of ways, as we’ve already outlined. In addition, keep the following points in mind as you consider whether or not this model is right for you:
- A secure option: When you bring people aboard through team augmentation, your IP rights remain with you, making this a secure option
- A flexible solution: When you’re looking for temporary help to get a new project off the ground or to get back on track, staff augmentation provides you with the flexibility you need without disrupting your current operations
- A wide talent pool: IT staff augmentation gives you the ability to tap into the talent you need without having to deal with expensive relocations
Whether or not you make use of the staff augmentation model is up to you, but we hope this article has given you peace of mind knowing that you have options available to grow your teams in non-traditional but effective ways.
