Managed services are much more like what you would normally expect when hiring a subcontractor or service vendor. Staff augmentation service gives you a level of control similar to having employees on-site in your office, with cost and administration benefits. If you have sufficient technical people who can set clear tasks and goals for employees hired for staff augmentation, then this could be a good way to get your project done cost-effectively.
What Is Staff Augmentation?
Staff augmentation is a lot more like traditional hiring, in that you are simply hiring contract workers for the duration of a specific project. They work for you, like a traditional employee, in that you give them orders and instructions, have meetings with them, and so on, but they usually work remotely. So, you don’t have to worry about benefits, finding a cubicle, or any other administrative and practical problems.
Those things can all take time and cost money. So, the staff augmentation model helps you to cut the red tape and hit the ground running faster.
Since you are hiring for a specific project, for a particular role, you can also focus only on the skills you really need. You don’t need to worry about culture fit either, since the person or people you choose won’t be a permanent part of your team. So technical competency can be the primary factor in every decision.
Staff Augmentation Pros
- Faster hiring time – since you are not hiring for the long term, you can focus only on the skills and experience you need for the project you are working on
- Hire the skills you need right now – if you are working on a project that needs a specific skill set now and different ones later, you can hire the people you need when you need them
- No long term commitments – you don’t need to hire people for the long term, so you don’t need to deal with long term contract will commitments
- Cost benefits – as you aren’t hiring permanent employees, even if their salary is higher than what you would normally spend, you would any spend for a short amount of time, and this can save cost
- Easy to manage – structure your team exactly as you want them to work, and have them report directly to the supervisor in charge of their role
- Negotiate rates and terms of employment directly with the people you
- No office politics – stop augmentation keeps office politics out of the way, since your short term employees have no vested interest in the day to day operations of your business
Staff Augmentation Cons
- Monitoring is a priority – not only do you need to set tasks and expectations, but you will also need to follow up to ensure that they are all met, unlike full-time employees, your short-term workers have no long-term incentive to perform.
- You still have to manage the process – managing people takes time and effort, and when you go with self-managed staff augmentation, there’s no one else to do that for you – so you will have to be quite hands-on.
- Adjust the process as you go – it is unlikely that you will find the perfect way to manage an augmented team the first time you try it, so be sure to review and adjust from time to time.
