We’ve been covering quite a lot why Bytex is a good environment for IT professionals, so it’s time we looked at things from the other way around, which is why today I’ll be taking a look at the idea of staff augmentation – what it is, when it’s useful (and for whom), and whether or not it’s a fitting long term solution for a growing business.
Whether you’re a startup that freshly secured another investment round or a corporation with thousands of employees, there are some pretty objective benefits that come to mind in regards to staff augmentation, such as:
- Not needing to invest in the infrastructure that comes with a larger team
- Reducing the overall time you spend on recruitment
- Avoiding the costs of in-house employees
- Or simply hiring with little to no geographical limitations (although this one applies to freelancing just as well, if you’re only looking to fill a role, and not for an entire team).
But because these benefits are so well known, I’ve decided to do the decent thing and use them as an introduction to this article, to then never mention them again.
In reality there are way more benefits than just the top-of-mind ones when it comes to hiring staff augmentation solutions, especially for the long run, and I’d much rather spend some time speaking about those.
The way I see it, there are three factors that make or break a business, in specifically this order: productivity, culture, and profitability. So let’s just take these criteria and see how they perform comparatively when it comes to staff augmentation.
Nihil Sine Flexibility
Never underestimate the power of having a flexible team to accommodate every business situation you’re in. It makes all the difference – and not just if you’re a startup. First, it’s a great resource to use when your team is overworked and needs help with particular sides of the project, giving you the perfect mix of control over the professionals working on your project (instead of just hiring random outsourcing solutions) and the possibility of keeping a slim in-house team.
Another flexibility-related benefit concerns the project management team, allowing you to focus on the issues that require the most attention instead of being overwhelmed by operational immediacy.
There’s also the added benefit of leveraging different talent pools from around the globe, which helps you fill difficult roles easier. If you’re in the market for a Scrum Master or a Product Manager with very specific knowledge, staff augmentation helps you bypass the issues of talent shortage.
And now extrapolate. Instead of finding just a good professional with a specific set of skills, you can find yourself a team of professionals.
This means more than just individual people who are motivated, who deliver on time and are very good in their fields. Teaming is just as much about technical knowledge as it is about soft skills and the capacity to work well together and to complement each other.
Finally, let’s talk about scaling. The closest you’ve got to an agile team, while also leveraging the reliability of an in-house department is staff augmentation.
Need to grow your department overnight or to scale down? Problem solved. Operating in a highly competitive market means that your business can look very different from one year to the next, and your best way of staying flexible is a dedicated team that doesn’t require the commitment of an internal department.
Your Culture Is Your Success
But first about the global situation. The current Great Resignation is the result of a highly skilled millennial workforce being overworked, overwhelmed and underpaid. This global issue has come on top of the existing talent shortage, which was already threatening for very competitive industries such as different branches of technology.
In the context of senior professionals understanding the need to focus on a work-life balance or to drop working altogether, as it happened during the pandemic, keeping your existing team engaged means taking care of a number of factors.
The first of these is lowering stress and pressure within your in-house departments. High volumes of tasks can become daunting if they’re a recurrence, and the lack of loyalty can make your most valued team members leave for better and less stressful offers. A staff augmentation solution elevates this pressure and creates a proactive space of productivity.
A new dynamic means a streamlined process, more motivation and a vision for the future.
Keeping things fresh is another cultural requirement for 21st century companies. You can’t expect your best and brightest to be happy about routinely similar tasks. Instead, adding new people to the team will bring a positive change in motivation. Worrying less about the impending tasks in the calendar creates clarity and builds a better outlook on the project, which in turn will mean that your team will perform significantly better.
Expectedly, Profitability
Before counting the money made off new clients, the first thing to address here is how much more cost efficient loyalty actually is. Going through a recruitment process is more costly the better the professional.
First, there’s the obvious costs of replacing professionals who leave – a reality of the tech industry is that people never retire from their first, second or third job. When this happens, especially if you’ve hired a larger team, the costs of replacing those senior developers with other equally talented professionals falls onto the staff augmentation provider’s responsibility.
By partnering with a staff augmentation solution, you bypass your internal recruitment process not once, but twice – once for the existing employees who will stay longer within the company, and once for the added project members.
For our next process, let’s tackle the way growth happens within a company. It’s not a miraculous process, but in fact a series of healthy practices that help create a productive environment where every professional will bring their best of their contribution.
Focusing on bringing together people who work well together creates team synergy, which is perhaps one of the most profitable things a company can do.
For all of these points, we’ve designed an internal methodology to help us navigate through your needs and your objectives.
Curious about who we are? Great! Because we can’t wait to turn another project into a success story.
