Can IT Staff Augmentation Help Solve Your Tech Staffing Problems?

This is a practice of addressing your business needs by receiving a specialized skill set through outsourcing.

Outsourcing gets a bad rep these days because many assume it’s just a simple way for business owners to cut costs. However, it’s a normal practice for small and medium-sized businesses alike to meet their IT needs by outsourcing. Why?

They don’t have the means to hire onboard IT staff.

Since information technology is a central part of most operations today, businesses without a lot of resources might rely on cloud technology because they cannot host physical infrastructure. The same applies to outsourcing the IT staff.

For many, IT staff augmentation is the only way to add members to their team and meet market demands.

Depending on the needs of the business and the skill set involved, staff augmentation can have three distinct types:

1. Commodity: This type of augmentation doesn’t require specialization and is leaning more toward urgently filling staffing gaps. It could include manual labor, retail, factory work, etc.

2. Skill-based: These workers can complete tasks that require a particular set of skills such as typing,knowledge of spreadsheets.

3. Highly skilled: If you require more advanced skills only attainable through training and experience, this is your best bet. Very popular in the IT sector and other industries such as legal

Even though the prospect of augmenting your workforce sounds good on paper, you should carefully consider if it makes sense to do so. 

These are the best situations in which you should supplement your team:

1. Reinforcing your team

This one is a no-brainer - IT staff augmentation is your best option if you need to add more thinking power to your current employees. This is especially useful when completing urgent projects in your pipeline, starting new ones, or releasing a new product.

2. Bridging skill gaps

Most projects require a wide set of skills, and the demand for these skills is constantly changing. You can address this problem by using IT staff augmentation on a project-by-project basis. That way, you can bring in specialized skills when required, without training your current employees to do so or hiring a full-time employee.

3. Meeting deadlines

To avoid crunch time and meet deadlines, you can augment your staff to fulfill the needs of the project. Going down the traditional path of job posting and onboarding could take upwards of two months, which might not be the time you have to spare. But with IT staff augmentation, you have ready access to a wide talent pool from around the world.

4. Expanding your team faster

By looking for an employee specialized in software development or cloud networks locally, you’re losing valuable time. The augmentation model can help you massively cut the time of finding and hiring an expert to expand your team.

By hiring a carefully vetted outsourced worker, you ensure that your new staff member will have less trouble integrating into your team. With that, you can avoid any bottlenecks stemming from short-staffing or a bad hire

IT staff augmentation relies on a third-party tech staffing company that already has vetted IT professionals at speed dial. Since they’re trying to meet the demands of their clients, they’ll put their foot forward in trying to connect you with someone who is a great fit for your project.

Finding a part-time or a full-time employee this way is also easier as you’ll avoid the hassle of job postings and filtering out candidates yourself. More importantly, IT staff augmentation is usually a lot cheaper than the traditional hiring process which may cost over $4000 per hire.

Lastly, outsourcing is much more flexible, especially when you consider the problems with maintaining staff members. Depending on the circumstances, a staff member might become redundant. With an outsourced employee who is working for you on a temporary basis, you can decrease or increase your workforce depending on the needs of your organization or the project you’re working on.

While augmenting your IT staff is favorable, there are a few small drawbacks to be aware of. You should carefully consider the following and how it applies to your organization.

Your project might require a lot more familiarity, particularly in scenarios where you rely on non-standardized processes that have a significant learning curve. In that case, you’ll have to perform additional training for the new hire, which may push back your project. 

This extra work may seem redundant, especially if your new IT staff member is there short-term. 

Still, the biggest problem is the ongoing dependency on third-party employees, which might not be sustainable. If you’re constantly struggling to meet business goals but you have to outsource key roles through an agency all the time, you’ll end up undercutting your own business. 

This is also true for small businesses and startups that have no internal IT staff. They may leverage staff augmentation to jump-start their business. But eventually, once they accumulate enough resources, they should build their own internal IT team instead of relying on outsourced staff members indefinitely.

With IT specialists in high demand, you may not be able to find an employee as fast as you’d like. By working with a staffing agency that can help you augment your staff, you may resolve ongoing issues or simply set up a short-term solution - the choice is yours.

Additionally, avoiding the tedious processes that come with hiring and onboarding a new employee can help you focus your attention on the tasks that matter most.

If IT staff augmentation seems like a great solution for your organization, feel free to contact Griffin Global. We can help you find not only short-term candidates, but build a strong internal team that’s in it for the long run. 

We’ve already got highly specialized IT employees waiting, so you only have to call (855) 747-4334 or send us an email at contact@ggscorp.com and you’ll be a step closer to your perfect new hire.