Many industries and companies are dwelling on the IT staff augmentation process. IT Staff augmentation allows companies to hire remote software developers and provide contract-based jobs. In the year 2021, a study conducted by Mercer Study found that around 70% of the MNCs are planning to adopt a hybrid working model – such as Adobe, Spotify, etc.
As per the data published by Global Workplace Analytics – 37% of technology professionals are ready to work remotely even if they are getting a 10% pay cut.
Even, according to a LinkedIn Poll Survey – 40% of people think that working from home is more productive.
So, there are multiple reasons why IT staff augmentation is growing. Staff augmentation provides immense benefits to employers as well as employees. IT Staff Augmentation company reduces the challenges for both startups and well-established businesses. It helps other companies to hire the right talent to fill their project requirements.
The staff augmentation process allows the candidates to work from anywhere, so no more location limitation criteria can stop an employer from hiring the best talent.
IT Staff Augmentation services will work best for you:
- If you want to increase the number of members in a team
- If you required professional support on unique projects
- If your team is unable to manage large projects
- If you don’t have the best talent in your in-house team
There are a lot of benefits of IT Staff Augmentation services but there are some drawbacks too. Thus, check this out to know more about the pros and cons of the IT Staff Augmentation process.
Pros of Staff Augmentation
#1: It can provide you with a competitive edge because of cost-effectiveness
Suppose you are a business owner, and you decide to switch towards incorporating the IT staff augmentation process. Now, you have two options:
Option A:
–To hand over a single project to the augmented staff.
Option B:
–To hand over all the projects to the augmented staff.
Now, which option will you select?
Surely, you will select option A only. You will only hire augmented team members for accomplishing the project goals of a specific project. So, hiring an augmented team will reduce your burden to bear the cost of long-term team-based operations. Thus, it acts like a competitive edge because your firms get the opportunity to complete projects in reduced costs.
#2: Expansion of the company – staffing flexibility
Through the IT staff augmentation process, you can hire software developers remotely. It helps your firm or company to scale up your employee base and provide flexibility for your development team.
On the other hand, if you choose to expand your human resources by hiring in-house employees then there are two major hindrances – drowning of investments and your company will need to provide resources to the in-house employees.
The staff augmentation offers flexibility for adding more people without onboarding them. For the expansion of human resources, you need to hire or give the contract to the online talent providers.
In simple words, your company will be going to face less investment in setting up the augmented team versus in-house employees.
[Important note: If your company decided to adopt the IT staff augmentation then your company will still require spending some time with remote developers or team members to make sure that they understand all the project goals. Sometimes technical issues, security issues, mental health, and communication difficulties are such challenges remote workers face. So, it is equally important for the company to resolve them.]
#3: Access to unique and external opinions:
The staff augmentation process enables an organization to access opinions or ideas from a third-party perspective.
For example: millennial generation groups and generation Z incorporate a wide view related to the common consumer psychology and latest trends. So, it will be going to help your company to form profound decisions.
For example: in the staff augmentation, you can conduct “brainstorming” and “mind-mapping” virtual sessions. These techniques (brainstorming and mind-mapping) will help you in gaining different ideas or opinions in an effective way.
#4: Growth in the IT Staff Augmentation
According to the report published by SpendEdge, the staff augmentation industry will incorporate a total incremental spend of $81.87billion. This industry will grow by 3.53% CAGR till the year 2025.
There are the following primary reasons behind the growth of the Staff Augmentation process – such as:
- Boosting the productivity of the employees.
- It can effectively address the issue of skill shortage.
- It can lower the load of in-house employees.
If you hire augmented teams, then your in-house employees and remote employees must share similar goals or KPIs. So, forming a collaboration of work (among in-house employees and remote employees) will help you to accomplish your project goals.
Cons of the Staff Augmentation
#1: There is no further assurance that the same workers will work for you in the previous remunerations once the contract has been completed
Suppose that you are an IT hiring manager, and you decide to hire a few contract-based remote developers. After working with them you decided to hand over a new project to them.
In reality, do you know what will happen?
Contract-based developers are smart. When contract workers get another project handling offer from you then there is a high probability that they will demand high remuneration.
On the other hand, if you hand over any work to in-house employees then they are not going to demand urgent or frequent salary hikes.
#2: Potential harm can be caused to the company’s data privacy policy in some cases
If you are working with any contract-based team members, then there can be a few projects which are required to share the company’s data with the augmented staff. It can cause harm to your company’s compliance and data privacy.
So, in that case, to avoid such situations, you should create a proper compliance and data privacy agreement with remote developers before sharing sensitive information.
#3: The quality Check (QC) team or project auditors need to input more effort
If you are working in any IT company, then you have come across various e-mails from your QC department related to your projects. As QCs are responsible for ensuring that the final project delivery should be complete as per the client’s requirement.
If your company is planning to hire augmented staff members, then the workload of your QC members might increase.
[Important note: it is recommended to develop additional key performance indicators (KPIs) for the augmented staff members. KPIs will help in tracking the performance of the team members].
#4: More number of staff members can lead to more managerial complexities
Currently, it is considered in the IT industry that augmented staff members can effectively help the company to avoid workload. But sometimes, recruiting more staff members can lead to a higher burden on the management.
Conclusion
Now the question arises – whether IT staff augmentation can be helpful for you or not?
So, these three parameters will help you to decide whether you should move towards IT staff augmentation or avoid it.
#1: Do you need to share any confidential data with the remote developers in order to complete the project?
#2: Are you getting qualified and highly skilled remote developers?
#3: Do your in-house teams are unable to handle the work even if you provide them more compensation?