Staff Augmentation: Less Risk. More Flexibility
With unemployment at a 50-year low, finding and retaining talent has become more challenging. At the same time, workloads and market conditions are constantly shifting.
In the fast-paced IT world, the time it takes to recruit, hire and train new employees can dramatically slow down innovation. Today, organizations need to be nimble in order to meet their business goals. Staff augmentation is often the ideal solution.
So, what is staff augmentation? In simple terms, when an organization needs additional skills or manpower, they turn to an outside resource to extend their in-house team. The provider literally augments the client’s team with the right people to get a particular job done. It’s a great way for businesses to get a lot accomplished without investing so much.
When it comes to many technology solutions, Appstem can be that resource. Working with us to fill timely staffing needs brings not only the stability and reputation of a top Bay Area technology company to bear, but also the flexibility needed to work efficiently and successfully.
The staff augmentation practice is quite common. Staffing Industry Analysts, a global advisor on staffing and workplace solutions, estimates that the global staffing industry supports $491 billion of worldwide revenue. The organization also tracks freelance or gig workers and finds that 53 million people in the United States took on gig work in 2018 – that’s 34% of all U.S. workers – a number is estimated to grow over the next decade.
Appstem has a big advantage being based in the San Francisco Bay Area, a hub for seasoned tech employees. We can lend your team the resources they need to adapt to your company’s needs. There are several reasons why staff augmentation is a good strategy.
There’s never enough time for hiring. It takes a long time to find the right employee. Hiring managers must know what they need in an employee, post the job, weed through applications, interview multiple candidates and eventually hire. Then there’s the training and on-boarding process. We can take the process out of the process so your team can stay focused on the work. Appstem engineers and designers are ready to hit the ground running and seamlessly become embedded in your team for a project’s duration.
It saves money. When it comes to one-time or intermittent projects, staff augmentation is a practical solution because it eliminates the infrastructure costs related to hiring full time employees. The most obvious cost savings comes with having to provide a competitive salary and benefits package for full-time employees, which is estimated at 23% of an employee’s salary. This can include health insurance, 401K, professional development and more. Comparably, staff augmentation is quite reasonable and cost-effective.
Flexibility and scalability. Organizations must be able to respond quickly and effectively to market changes. Staff augmentation provides the opportunity to be nimble as the needs of the organization change or when they want to take on a project that is too big for their current team. By allowing Appstem to provide the pool of knowledgeable IT professionals, a company can add highly specialized talent who are the right fit for highly specialized projects. Companies can also expand or contract their workforce to meet different project deadlines on demand, a practice reminiscent of how retail business hire seasonal workers to manage the holiday rush.
How Appstem can help. Appstem’s team can fill the knowledge gaps of a client’s in-house team that might not be specialized in software development. Because we’re based in the San Francisco Bay Area, we are in the hub of technology and innovation. We have access to an abundance of highly skilled employees making staff augmentation a great match for projects that require specialized skills. We also know that sometimes in this competitive market companies can’t hire quickly enough to meet their project goals. Our engineers and designers can step right in to fill crucial roles with no onboarding time and enhance the technical knowledge of the in-house staff in the process. They’ll integrate with the client’s team, learn their processes and participate in regular internal communications, while at the same time bringing the firepower needed to get the job done. We are also able to alleviate issues of culture, time-zone, and language differences, all of which can slow down innovation – or worse, lead to costly mistakes.
Though the concept of staff augmentation is straightforward, planning ahead is a key best practice for success. Clients need to be clear about their needs – how much staff, what skills are needed, what are the deliverables, and how it all will be measured – at the outset. Staff augmentation is not without its downside. It’s not always the right fit for long term projects. There’s a risk that if a project continues over a multi-year period there will be turnover. Companies also raise the risk of becoming more dependent on third party talent. However, those cons are outweighed by the benefits.
Staff augmentation is not just outsourcing. It is a strategy to create the best team for the job at hand. Our resources are a way to boost efficiency by bringing you the right people with the right expertise to stay competitive in the global marketplace.
