The business landscape in the post-Covid world is undergoing many reforms. From work culture to business plans and models, practices are changing throughout. Hybrid work culture and remote work have become a norm in 2022. As a result, staff augmentation services are now a widely accepted staffing solution to hire skilled resources. The advancements created by globalization and digitization further simplify the access to utilizing augmented staffing services.
In this article, we take a look at the trends in IT staff augmentation in 2022. However, before diving into the topic, we will cover the basics of this staffing model, its types, use and benefits.
What is Staff Augmentation?
Staff augmentation is an outsourcing strategy in which a company hires resources for required skills from an external provider, temporarily. The provider/vendor employs the resources who work for a chosen company on a contract basis. It is a valuable method for hiring skills on an on-demand approach. For example, say a particular project needs the skills of a researcher and the in-house team does not have one. They can hire a researcher temporarily through staff augmentation rather than hiring a full-time resource.
IT staff augmentation is a subset of this model in which a company is specifically looking for skilled technical resources, on a temporary basis. You can hire developers, programmers, and technology experts through IT staffing providers.
When Can You Use It?
Five different scenarios where you can utilize staff augmentation services are:
- There is a temporary increase in everyday work, and you need extra labor. For example, seasonal business requirements, increased production, etc.
- You need specialized skills for a period of time that your in-house team cannot fulfill. For example, you need a logo designer for creating your brand logo.
- Due to changes in your business operations you have moved to a new location or entered a new domain. You require temporary resources to carry out functioning till you set up a permanent team.
- You choose to build your team using flexible resources to gain exposure to varied skill sets and make the best use of it.
- The skill sets you need are not available/affordable from the local talent pool. So you want to explore resources in other locations.
Types of Staff Augmentation
We can divide staff augmentation into three categories – commodity, skilled, and highly skilled.
While the category commodity does not require any specific skill set (e.g., manual labor), skilled requires skills that are not critical (like data processing). The type highly skilled requires advanced skills, and IT staff augmentation comes under this type.
We can broadly divide the staff augmentation services into two types – short-term and long-term. As evident from the name, short-term services are used when there is a requirement for a small period, and long term is used for longer contracts. Moreover, these services are provided through different models such as the traditional staffing model, master vendor model, specialized consulting firms, and online platforms.
Pros and Cons of the Augmented Staffing Model
Like every strategy, staff augmentation also has certain pros and cons. We will discuss them in this section so that you can determine whether it is the right model for your needs.
The benefits of using staff augmentation services are:
Skilled team: By hiring competent augmented staff, you can build a skilled team specific to your project requirements for the required project cycle. Whatever skill gap you have in your in-house team can be covered by hiring talent that is relevant to your objective.
High productivity: Compared to other outsourcing models, staff augmentation yields higher productivity as the augmented staff are dedicated resources who work only on your project during the contract period.
Flexibility: You can scale up or down the size of your team depending on the demand for talent and the amount of work.
Cost-effectiveness: Since you don't have to look after administrative or organizational expenses, you can cut down the operational costs.
Swift hiring: It is easy and fast to hire resources through staffing providers as they have access to a wide talent pool and can find the suitable resources for you quickly.
Low recruitment effort: You need to spend only minimum effort in recruitment as the staffing providers will take care of most recruitment steps. Often, the company has to involve only in the final interview.
All these benefits make staff augmentation a really useful outsourcing approach. However, some disadvantages of this strategy are:
High ramp-up times: Certain projects require in-depth knowledge of institutions and context, in which case the ramp-up time increases, leading to higher expense.
Cultural differences: When hiring staff for other regions, there will be differences in language, time zone, work culture, etc. Adapting to it might take time.
Dependency: Completely relying on a third-party provider for staffing requirements may not be a sustainable solution.
Staff Augmentation vs Managed Services
Staff augmentation and managed services are two different staffing models. While both of them are outsourcing strategies, they are very different from each other. Let's take a look at their differences.
- In staff augmentation, a company hires candidates with the required skill set through a provider and they work in-house. In managed services, the entire project is outsourced to an external team, and a definitive deliverable is expected from them.
- The service provider takes care of administrative aspects for staff augmentation. The hiring company can choose the candidates and are responsible for managing them. On the other hand, in managed services, the hiring company cannot choose the resources or manage them.
- The hiring company has complete control over the augmented resources and can manage them just like their in-house team. However, for managed services, the hiring company has negligible control and cannot oversee day-to-day work.
- If using managed services, you don't require any resources for managing the outsourced team. They work autonomously and make all decisions by themselves. With staff augmentation services, you are hiring resources and are responsible for managing them.
Common Misconceptions
A commonly existing misconception about staff augmentation is that it is the same as software outsourcing. From the readings so far, you would have understood how staff augmentation works and differs from outsourcing.
Another misconception is regarding the cost. Some believe that hiring augmented staff is a cost-reducing strategy, while others think it is expensive. It may vary from case to case and from company to company; hence is a debatable point. The highlight here is that staff augmentation gives companies access to skilled resources on an on-demand basis.
IT Staff Augmentation Trends in 2022
In the post-pandemic world, global IT outsourcing is growing exponentially. As companies adapt to new ways of working, some of the trends we see in IT staff augmentation services in 2022 are:
Cybersecurity: As the remote workforce increases, cybersecurity attacks become a major concern. The demand for cybersecurity professionals is expected to shoot up, with every organization needing tools and training to shield their systems from the attack of hackers.
Advanced technology: Technologies such as cloud computing, AI, ML, RPA, etc., are being extensively used by organizations to streamline their workflows. There will be a huge demand for specialists in this area.
Customer experience (CX): Organizations have started looking more seriously into improving CX as it translates directly to sales in today's competitive market. There are tremendous opportunities in the CX field as businesses of all scales are prioritizing customer experience.
New locations: As staff augmentation services become popular, competition is increasing. Vendors from new regions are emerging with augmentation services and challenging traditional markets.
Flexible work: With the remote work culture in place, flexibility in the work schedule has become unavoidable. Companies are looking for resources to work flexibly according to internal team schedules, client needs, and other factors.
Soft skills: As the staff augmentation market is maturing and the talent pool is becoming wide, companies are looking for resources with soft skills such as good communication skills, interpersonal skills, time management, etc.
Why Choose Us for Your IT Staff Augmentation Services
Aufait Technical Consulting Services has a vast pool of skilled resources in various domains. You can find professionals of all skill levels and pay scales whom you can hire on a contract basis, project basis, or long-term basis depending on your need. We have certified resources that are highly skilled and experts in different technologies. You won't have to worry about training the hired resources as we offer you experts in their domains who require no training.
Whether you are looking for front-end developers, back-end developers, mobile app development professionals, or content management experts, we will help you find the best candidate for your needs.