What Is Staff Augmentation and How Can It Benefit Your Startup?

So you already have an excellent idea ready to shape as a startup. What you don’t have is a skilled team to transform your idea into reality.

This is quite often a common problem with startups where they can be confused about how to kickstart things by hiring the right in-house talent. This is where the need for staff augmentation arises for both measuring software development metrics and productivity.

For successful startups belonging to any industry, it is the people who can make or break a business, which is why staff augmentation plays a crucial role when handled wisely. Before starting on about how staff augmentation can impact a startup, let us first understand the concept briefly.

What is Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation simply refers to outsourcing the job of hiring individuals to a proficient partner capable of developing robust teams to work in tandem with your in-house team(s). The method involves conducting interviews to determine talents and audit potential candidates with appropriate skills and experience, and the best part is that your outsourcing partner takes care of it. 

So, how can staff augmentation boost your startup from the initial stages? Let us find out.

• Recruitment gets extremely simplified and time-saving

You can certainly hire professionals all by yourself. However, it would not just be time-consuming to take interviews and shortlist them, but may also eventually get costly down the road. 

This is where a professional staff augmentation firm with a team of specialists can take away your burden while simplifying the entire process by hiring the right experts perfect for the job. With a structured and systematic approach, only a staff augmentation specialist firm with vast experience in the field can deliver the right manpower to you. 

Inform your partner about your staffing needs and they would handle the rest for you. All your outsourcing needs are taken care of by your staff augmentation partner who will recruit the finest professionals for you.

• Accelerate the recruiting process

The team operating at a staff augmentation firm has years of experience in recruiting dedicated remote employees. After the recruiting process, a dedicated group of individuals goes through a rigorous process of screening prospective hires from background checks to scheduling interviews, taking follow-ups, performing interviews, deciding on payroll, and finally settling them in the company.

• Staff Augmentation is cost-effective compared to in-house recruitment

One of the main advantages staff augmentations can offer to startups is the adaptability of remote teams when it comes to working hours and payment. This way, a startup has all the flexibility to scale up or down workers if and when necessary to do so while accounting only on an hourly basis for the time augmented employees have worked for.

• Hire experienced professionals instead of hiring randomly

Most of the time you tend to hire incompatible people in a hurry, without understanding whether they could fulfill the purpose for the long term or not.

Staff augmentation is also a practical solution when you need specialized skills just for the short term, and not planning to have them for a long time. Imagine, having people on the payroll for job positions that last only for a short term, after which they aren’t needed since the plan is fulfilled.

• Boost your business turnaround-time 

Since you have the augmented staff hired in no time, you can let them assume their job roles and get them to start working upon their job duties enabling you to stay ahead of your competitors. 

• Receive top-notch quality with excellent skills

When you have augmented staff in place, you are having a diverse group of remote employees with a range of skill sets that are sometimes rare or challenging to find when you do it all by yourself. Different projects demand individuals with a broad spectrum of experience that is not necessarily always there with in-house employees.

When having remote global employees, you have all the skills covered who can focus on projects of all complexities. When you do it by yourself, the recruitment process can take months, but with a staff augmentation firm, you can have them hired in a matter of hours or days.

Why Traditional Outsourcing of Staff Varies From Staff Augmentation

Although both recruitment models might appear the same, they do have a thin line of distinction with unidentical delivery models to offer. Let us distinguish between the two and understand which startups development works best and when.

With a traditional outsourcing model in place, it is the complete responsibility of your outsourcing partner to execute the entire project without your involvement while having complete command over it. Besides, costs and outcomes are predefined in the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with no scope of modifications at any point in time.

This is not the case with staff augmentation outsourcing wherein the project control rests both with augmented staff and in-house staff so that project changes can be carried out according to the convenience and project requirements. Additionally, outcomes and costs are dynamic and determined according to the nature of the project, development, requirements for manpower, and running status.

When to opt for staff augmentation? Well, it’s best to hire augmented staff when time and cost factors are crucial for business success. If there are no-cost and time restrictions, it is best to fully outsource your project.