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Imagine your in-house team working on a project but encountering a roadblock due to a skills gap. The issue caused delays and backlogs. You tried to hire internally to immediately restore the effort’s progress. But, no one is willing to take on the extra workload due to possible overtime and burnout.
Business process outsourcing (BPO) can help overcome such challenges. Service providers offer staff augmentation services to resolve shortfalls and streamline activities without requiring considerable funds.
However, you must develop effective staff augmentation strategies before optimizing its benefits. Find out why and how below.
Reasons to develop staff augmentation strategies
Staff augmentation involves hiring temporary workers to overcome capability challenges that disrupt your short-term projects. This outsourcing strategy provides access to specific skill sets while helping you cut operating expenses.
Moreover, the staff augmentation model lets you quickly modify team size based on shifting demands. It allows you to scale your projects up or down without the need for traditional employment obligations.
Such cost efficiency and flexibility have encouraged many businesses to hire temporary workers for one-time or urgent efforts. Hence, the global staff augmentation services market has experienced constant growth, increasing spending by $81.87 billion from 2021 to 2025.
However, you must create and implement innovative staff augmentation strategies to maximize those benefits. The list below shows what these BPO techniques can bring to your enterprise:
- Alignment of staff augmentation efforts with business objectives. Innovative strategies ensure the augmented workforce meets your specific project goals and requirements. Comprehensive assessments are critical to identify the most cost-effective way to leverage external resources.
- Optimization of resource allocation. Robust techniques guide strategic resource distribution and help maximize the value derived from staff augmentation initiatives. Determining areas that require third-party expertise assists in making a well-structured investment plan.
- Improvement of risk management. Implementing staff augmentation without a thoughtful approach poses risks to your organization, such as workflow disruptions and cyber threats. Inventive strategies provide clear guidelines to minimize issues and performance metrics to measure the practice’s effectiveness.
- Integration with internal processes. When applying effective strategies, expect the smooth incorporation of augmented staff with your in-house project team. This integration streamlines knowledge sharing, cross-functional learning, and output quality.
- Assurance of sustainability and long-term success. Strategically augmenting staff helps you adapt to changing market demands, business priorities, and tech trends, setting up your enterprise for continued growth and competitiveness.
According to data from CYPHER Learning, non-compliance costs companies an average of $1.6 million annually. Establishing an innovative staff augmentation strategy helps you meet crucial regulatory requirements and avoid losing money.
This outlined plan guides you in proactively identifying and mitigating legal risks while working with a third party. It also strengthens your industry’s reputation and credibility.
Best practices for creating staff augmentation strategies
Google is among the many tech giants that have experienced the effectiveness of outsourcing human resources (HR). Its temporary workforce comprises about 3% of its overall extended staff.
The company uses BPO to acquire skills that it lacks internally and to avoid operational inefficiencies caused by full-time employees on short-term leave. It collaborates with staff augmentation agencies worldwide to meet fluctuating business needs and complete special projects swiftly.
However, before receiving similar benefits, it is crucial to understand how to draft and implement staff augmentation strategies. Doing so helps maximize third-party expertise and produce high-quality output. Note the critical steps below.
Assess and clarify project needs
Evaluating and specifying your project requirements ensures that third-party HR aligns with your business targets. So, you need to define your effort’s goals, timelines, and deliverables. Determine your desired outcomes, such as building a new e-commerce app.
Perform a skills gap analysis to identify the exact skills and number of extra workers necessary to execute the initiative quickly and successfully. Also, assess which type of staff augmentation suits your project’s budget. Make sure it offers the best balance of cost, quality, and speed.
Identify and source needed third-party talent
Specify the expertise and experience that your in-house team members lack. Seek third-party professionals with the technical and soft skills to fulfill your project’s objectives. When hiring only one or two freelancers, use various talent-sourcing channels, such as Upwork.
On the other hand, partner with a reliable staffing agency or HR BPO provider to easily hire a team of professionals for your urgent efforts. These third-party companies will handle the entire recruitment process, only charging services for agreed-upon hourly or monthly fees.
Centralize communication channels
Establishing a central hub for communication is crucial, whether augmenting staff with freelancers or BPO organizations. The communication platform should enable real-time engagement, secure document sharing, and smooth collaboration. Choose among certified project management tools and messaging apps such as Asana or Slack.
Schedule regular check-ins, status meetings, and milestone reviews. These sessions inform all parties about project achievements, challenges, and areas of improvement. This effort also fosters transparent and open communication among participants, letting them share feedback to enhance staff augmentation strategies.
Define key performance indicators (KPIs)
Despite the temporary nature of staff augmentation, listing KPIs remains vital to measuring its effectiveness and applicability moving forward. When working with third-party experts, you should align these metrics with your project’s ultimate goals and desired outcomes.
Set realistic, attainable, and relevant targets per KPI. These goalposts should be based on the project scope, complexity, and availability of resources. Also, baseline performance levels and benchmarks should be established. These will help monitor progress, determine trends, and assess the benefits of staff augmentation efforts.
Ensure security and regulatory compliance
Remember to include critical security and compliance measures in your staff augmentation techniques. Because engagement with third-party personnel often occurs remotely, sensitive data is potentially exposed to cyberattacks. Hence, you must implement access controls to allow only authorized individuals to use and modify your data.
Perform thorough due diligence to assess the augmented staff’s credentials and capabilities to adhere to relevant compliance standards. Ensure each worker knows and abides by legal requirements in their respective fields, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
Evaluate and iterate lessons learned
After completing a project with augmented staff, review its contribution and identify lessons learned. Collect feedback from in-house stakeholders, external resources, and clients involved in the project. Furthermore, assess the established KPIs to determine whether they were effectively measured and accomplished.
You should also analyze performance data and evaluate the impact of staff augmentation on project outcomes and business targets. Develop action plans to address identified areas for improvement and update staff augmentation strategies accordingly.
The bottom line
As your business grows and deals with short-term projects, augmenting staff offers a cost-effective way to resolve skills shortages and inefficiencies. However, robust methods are needed to properly maximize the benefits of the BPO model.
Understanding and exercising the best practices discussed helps you clarify and match your project goals with staff augmentation efforts. Establishing core communication channels and performance-tracking mechanisms lets you measure and attain success with a third-party workforce.
Let’s connect if you seek a reliable BPO partner to optimize your project team. Unity Communications houses well-trained professionals and advanced solutions to boost your temporary initiatives and deliver intended outcomes.
