One of the emerging methods gaining momentum in the business world is “Staff Augmentation.” In contemporary times, businesses of every kind are making their way towards more resourceful, innovative, and flexible tactics to hire skillful and talented professionals. This modern-day framework is a great solution to enable companies to boost their productivity and efficiency while minimizing overhead costs.
What is Staff Augmentation?
It refers to the outsourcing model to fill the skill gap of your company. This framework allows you to get highly skilled and talented resources on a contractual basis instead of hiring them permanently. Your company will be able to manage the augmented staff directly as you are getting highly qualified and skilled employees that help in meeting your project objectives. This model fills in a temporary gap or need for a specific resource. Resource outsourcing service provider companies streamline the process of adding new IT resources to projects without being bothered by payroll, benefits, and HR processes.
Pros and Cons of IT Staff Augmentation:
This solution comes with a list of pros for the existing businesses on a short-term basis. For many companies, such services turn out to be a game-changer.
There are several cons that show that such services don’t fit every company. It is fair to look at some of the pros that every business needs to know before hiring its services.
Pros | Cons |
Staff augmentation enables you to gain control over the staff. You can have complete access and influence on all the processes and stay involved in all the tasks and processes. | Most countries speak English but every country speaks different dialects which may lead to miscommunications. To potentially avoid communication errors and waste of time it is vital to ensure that message is clearly understood. |
The service provider allows you to save time and expense associated with recruiting staff and takes responsibility for all the HR and recruitment management for you. | Projects that take a long time in completion than expected require additional labor costs and highly-skilled professionals can be quite expensive. |
By hiring staff augmentation services the companies get the advantage of optimizing resources and saving their costs. | A change in project scope often makes it difficult to find or change staff members when using staff augmentation. |
You can get access to a pool of talented professionals. When your in-house team doesn’t possess the required skill set to meet your requirements. IT staff augmentation solutions allow HR teams to hire the personnel with the right expertise on a per-project basis. | In staff augmentation, the on-boarded workers do remote work. Due to remote services, it is hard to access outsourced workers. |
Is Resource Outsourcing Good for Your Organization?
Compared to other recruiting methods staff augmentation is a cost-effective process of hiring a great number of workers for large organizations at a lower cost. Small, medium, and large size organizations can derive additional benefits from flexible talent acquisition solutions.
As outsourced recruiting became active in the market, staff augmentation has trickled down in small and medium business sectors over the past few years. Thus, smaller, agile recruiting process outsourcing firms are rising to become strategic recruiting partners and carving out unique niches in talent acquisition.
Varying needs and managing hiring capacity are major challenges that are faced by small-scale firms. It is a matter of course for the personnel working in smaller organizations to deal with multiple tasks such as managing the training, payroll, compensation, benefits, and employee relations. In addition to these challenges smaller firms also have the issue of hiring fluctuations over the year.
Outsourcing recruitment processes allows scalability and cost variability. The price and structure of staff augmentation engagements can be tailored to suit the hiring needs of the organization, making it a flexible recruitment solution.
How is Staff Augmentation Different from Other Outsourced Recruiting Options?
One of the three recruiting options that are used by organizations for hiring is: internal recruiters, staffing agencies, and contract recruiters. Few organizations recognized that staff augmentation could be a viable solution to their process of recruiting.
Staff Augmentation offers additional benefits over other outsourced recruiting models, such as:
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- Planning and analysis: Staff augmentation providers work with the clients to better understand the business goals. They help the clients in planning and taking the necessary steps to respond to the needs in order to cater to the business needs.
- Extensive job advertising: Staff augmentation providers advertise jobs through social media, job boards, referrals, and networking.
- Recruiting and retaining talent: Staff augmentation providers do more than just discover talent; they also develop an employer’s brand and reputation, engage future potential employees through talent acquisition platforms, and recruit candidates ahead of time using a variety of sourcing processes.
- Candidate Assessments: Staff augmentation providers assess candidates guide them through the beginning of the recruitment process, and ensure that they have the necessary job skills, competencies, and motivations.
- Management and care of candidate: Ensuring the candidate has relevant experience is crucial as it reflects on the employer’s brand. The Staff augmentation providers oversee the candidate’s experience and skills when they are being interviewed for the job.
Costs of Staff Augmentation
The staff augmentation costs depend on the organizational needs and goals. The service provider charges the fee according to the services required by the particular firm.
- Monthly Management Fee Model: The number of positions hired through the staff augmentation process determines the fee that is paid by the organizations to the providers. The fee fluctuates with the change in the number of hires over time. Some emerging staff augmentation services, as well as enterprise staff augmentation services, are associated with the cost model.
- Per Hire Model Cost- This type of cost is used for short-term projects of staff augmentation, where the service is needed for a few months. A fee is paid for each candidate who is hired through the process of staff augmentation. This model is considered a fit for the recruitment process outsourcing that outsources specific recruiting functions.
- Cost Per Hire Plus Management Fee- this model is the combination of the above two cost models. With this structure, the management fee takes into account the consistent recruitment effort, as well as the payment for hiring success.
- Cost per Slate- this is a model where the staff augmentation provider charges a fee for each open position. The candidates are sourced and screened through the recruiting process. Once the candidates have been selected, they will be provided to the internal recruiters for further screening and hiring. This model is a good fit for short-term projects.
- Per Transaction Cost- in this model, the fee is charged for specific processes such as initial screening or reference checks. A client who opts for on-demand staff augmentation services or consulting recruiting services can be charged per transaction, whether it’s an hourly rate or per candidate, depending on the type of service concerned.
Summing up
The process of staff augmentation brings success for the organizations if implemented correctly and effectively. The progress of the company can be ensured by improving the recruiting process and s, hiring skilled candidates that are a perfect fit for the specific position. According to Rocktech’s director, “ the progress, struggle, and failure of the organization depend on the resources they hire.” Rocktech is a provider of IT staff augmentation solutions with several benefits of the recruitment cycle, lower costs, fewer legal hassles sustained productivity, and work efficiency.
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