A 2023 survey with 1,313 respondents found that 24 percent of small business owners in the United States believe that the quality of labor is one of the most significant problems for small companies.
Quality of labor refers to employees’ skills, expertise, productivity, and competency. With many small business owners struggling with this aspect, it suggests potential issues, such as:
- Skill gaps
- Disengagement
- High turnover rates
- Adaptability
- A lack of training and development
Staff augmentation is one way to mitigate these issues. This strategy can bring plenty of benefits that upscale project management and daily operations.
So, how can you leverage this tactic to scale your workforce efficiently?
Understanding Staff Augmentation
Staff augmentation helps you scale your operations quickly. By working with a specialized staff augmentation service provider, you won’t have to worry about recruitment, training, and management. This recruitment process is best for short-term projects.
This hiring model involves three types: skill-based, commodity-based, and highly skilled.
- Skill-based – Focuses on recruiting skilled workers with more experience and higher education levels
- Commodity-based – Hires workers who can perform basic tasks. This model is ideal for companies with employee shortages or that require quick hiring
- Highly skilled – Outsources highly skilled talents for projects that require more expertise
The staff augmentation process is as follows:
- Identify your company’s required assistance
- Shortlisting of candidates that best fit your needs
- Screenings and interviews
- Finalize the employees you wish to hire
- Onboarding and post-hiring support
Benefits of Staff Augmentation to Small Businesses
Staff augmentation can support nearshore and offshore employees. The rewarding benefits include:
Enhances productivity and efficiency
Staff augmentation offers a faster recruitment process. You can instantly hire and work with high-performing professionals ready to contribute right after the onboarding. As everyone starts working full force, no time is wasted, enhancing productivity and efficiency.
The augmented team will also collaborate with your in-house team, setting clear goals by dividing project management tasks.
This division ensures the project and workflow align with the company’s requirements, creating an efficient, dynamic, and specialized team. This team delivers high-quality results and quickens the pace of the project implementation.
Flexibility and scalability
With a faster recruitment process, you won’t have to exhaust your resources on an extensive traditional hiring procedure. Staff augmentation offers a more flexible approach that helps you hire professionals who will meet your specific needs, allowing you to adapt to demands, last-minute tasks, and heavy workloads.
At the same time, you can quickly scale your daily operations by integrating skilled talent when a project requires assistance and support. Consequently, the workflow isn’t limited to your in-house team, maximizing efficiency and avoiding delays without overloading them.
Control over your projects
Staff augmentation helps ensure you have maximum control and security over your projects’ intellectual property (IP) rights, unlike other outsourcing models typically subject to shared ownership.
This hiring model involves contracts and agreements that outline time frames, scope, ownership, and payment terms. These conditions ensure you remain in charge of the workflow, directing the team’s efforts according to vision and predicted outcomes.
Moreover, such contracts help prevent miscommunication and legal issues, providing higher IP security. This way, you can establish lasting relationships with the augmented staff.
Focuses on projects and business objectives
Another benefit staff augmentation can bring is that it helps the team focus on projects and business objectives.
The dedicated team with augmented and in-house employees devote their time, skills, and effort to develop and launch projects efficiently. It allows them to focus on what matters and avoid pitfalls that could offset the outcomes.
As such, you can establish a workspace where everyone actively participates in refining strategies for better results. This collaboration delivers innovative insights, expertise, and problem-solving skills that provide appropriate solutions to existing and potential challenges.
Cost-efficiency
Embracing staff augmentation is akin to prudent credit score tracking. Just as keeping a close eye on your credit score helps you maintain good financial health, staff augmentation can reduce operational costs without compromising the quality of the projects.
This approach allows you to hire talent only when needed, minimizing the long-term costs of a full-time workforce. The goal is to optimize your resource allocation by ensuring every dollar is spent for growth and stability.
Additionally, you can avoid the potentially costly hiring process that involves ad creation, job postings, publishing, and marketing.
Access to a broader talent pool
Businesses are no longer restricted to the local workforce. With remote work and global markets becoming increasingly available, staff augmentation lets you expand your network of skilled talent.
This expansion provides more access to a broader talent pool by breaking geographical barriers, allowing you to hire offshore employees regardless of location and time zones.
A staff augmentation agency can help you handpick each employee across the globe without meeting face-to-face.
This way, you can build a globally scaled team with diverse backgrounds, expertise, perspectives, and experiences, enriching the growth projects with high-performing efforts.
Augmented teams don’t necessarily require training
While training new hires is standard practice to familiarize themselves with the company and hone their skills, it can be expensive and time-consuming.
However, augmented staff doesn’t necessarily require training. By evaluating the candidates’ strengths, you can find and recruit skilled professionals who won’t require special training.
You can directly onboard the augmented team when deemed fit, reducing the need to organize training sessions. Not only does this save time, costs, and resources, but it also helps the team commence with the project as early as possible.
Tips for Efficient Workforce Scaling Through Staff Augmentation
Staff augmentation is not a perfect hiring model. You should also understand its pitfalls to minimize risks and maximize efficiency. These disadvantages include:
- Augmented teams may not fit your company’s culture and workflow
- Augmented teams can be costly over time because they’re not ideal for long-term projects
- You may become counterproductive by reorganizing the team when the service provider terminates the contract, or the augmented staff leaves
- Coordinating meetings and planning sessions based on time zones
- Additional management responsibilities
As such, this section outlines tips for efficient staff augmentation.
Ensure transparent communication
Communication is crucial in every project. As an executive, you must promote transparent communication that allows every member to exchange insights and feedback.
You should show empathy and foster camaraderie. Assure your augmented team—particularly remote workers—that they will receive the adequate assistance they require. At the same time, build rapport by talking about non-work topics whenever possible.
Investing in internal messaging solutions is also beneficial. Make sure to choose one that every team member can use. This way, everyone can communicate and collaborate seamlessly.
Leverage project management solutions
Like internal messaging solutions, project management tools help enhance communication, collaboration, and workload management. These platforms have advanced features that automate, simplify, and monitor tasks.
Leveraging such programs can help augmented staff integrate into the workflow quickly, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
They can also provide real-time insights into individual contributions and project progress, making it easier to track deadlines and milestones.
Establish a workflow with cohesive roles
Your internal and external teams must have a clear understanding of their responsibilities.
This understanding will help your in-house and augmented teams focus on their duties and devote their skills to tasks aligned with their expertise. You can also equip them with the appropriate resources to maximize productivity.
These gains are possible when you establish a workflow with cohesive roles. The team has a structured environment where members understand your expectations, reducing confusion and overlapping responsibilities.
This clarity helps foster a harmonious working relationship that increases job satisfaction.
Promote a culture of trust and understanding
With different time zones, remote workers usually have varied productive hours. Personal workspaces don’t necessarily reflect conventional workplaces anymore. Home responsibilities and unexpected life moments are also in the equation.
For these reasons, flexibility is essential to many workers.
Thus, promote a culture of trust and understanding to accommodate your augmented staff’s flexible working hours. This approach can cultivate a sense of autonomy, improving job satisfaction and reducing burnout.
This way, the external staff can contribute to a positive work environment that strives for growth.
How to Choose the Right Staff Augmentation Service
You must ensure your chosen staff augmentation provider meets your requirements. Here’s how to choose the right one:
Determine staffing needs
The first step involves determining your staffing needs. You should identify whether the teams require IT support, marketing optimization, bookkeeping, project management, or creative work. Whichever it is depends on what the management thinks is lacking.
Consult with your employees, managers, and HR executives about areas of improvement, such as skill sets and task management.
Afterward, determine the potential costs of augmentation. This workforce scaling is an investment, so the last thing you’d want is to waste resources on services that don’t meet your expectations.
Assess the project duration
Since staff augmentation is best for short-term projects, you must assess the project timeline you wish to scale. Other outsourcing models, like managed services and independent contractors, might be ideal for plans that will take a year or more.
This assessment also enables you to make informed choices, allowing you to allocate resources without offsetting finances and operations. This way, you’ll work with a staff augmentation agency that can supply your required workforce based on time constraints.
Ensure security and confidentiality
A reputable staffing agency provides comprehensive background checks and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). It also equips its staff with training sessions about IP rights, data security, and cybersecurity tools. These aspects help ensure your project’s security and confidentiality.
Remember to read reviews, testimonials, and case studies. You should also request demos to evaluate the service’s suitability if available.
Optimize Your Growth Projects with Staff Augmentation
For small businesses, every optimization tactic is invaluable to drive growth.
With staff augmentation, you can achieve your goals by building an outsourced team of skilled professionals without straining the budget. At the same time, you can proactively respond to market demands, embrace new opportunities, and establish your competitive edge in the industry.
