5 Ways Staff Augmentation Helps Global Companies Find the Right IT Staff

Liz Alton

Companies doing business globally need access to expert IT support, from consulting to smart hands support. Yet many businesses operating in global markets find IT hiring challenges are compounded internationally. Deloitte research found that organizations can take as long as 94 days to recruit for highly skilled roles, and according to the Harvard Business Review, nearly half of companies report that they don’t have the digital skills they need on hand. Increasingly, business leaders are turning to staff augmentation models to identify IT resources, integrate them with their teams, and get more done. Here’s a closer look at five key benefits global businesses capture from using staff augmentation.

Save Money on Hiring, Training ,and Retaining Global Staff

Recruitment is an expensive process—and it’s compounded when you do business internationally. When your internal recruiters work on hiring a resource, they have to source candidates, vet them, and work them through complex interview processes. Working in unfamiliar markets either creates extra work, or requires expensive partnerships with headhunting or recruiting firms. Onboarding staff and training them also adds to the workload and expenses. With staff augmentation, you can add capacity to your team in any market while keeping costs in check. Eliminate extra work for your team, while controlling costs. Staff augmentation leads to significant costs savings: recruiting, benefits, and underutilized staff can all add to the bottom line. With staff augmentation, companies have access to the global IT resources they need, while eliminating unnecessary spending.

Speed Up the Hiring Process

When you have crucial technical projects to be completed, unfilled positions cause delays and cost the bottom line. Yet recruiting skilled technical workers, especially in foreign markets, can take time. How long are your important positions going unfilled? In some cases, it can take months to source, hire, and onboard technical talent. Certain circumstances, such as working in countries with smaller talent pools or recruiting for highly specialized skills, takes even longer. Staff augmentation speeds up the time to identify key resources, often reducing weeks to just days in markets where you need to fill positions most.

Facilitate Management Oversight

When you onboard IT team members through staff augmentation, they act as an extension of your team. Rather than an outsourced firm that operates independently, these resources integrate into your existing infrastructure. This means your managers get visibility into how projects are going, can provide advice, and remain agile to changing priorities. A point of communication on the staff augmentation provider side ensures resources are brought up to speed, limiting internal management time and maximizing results.

Scale Up or Down as Your Needs Change

Hiring an employee is a major investment including salary, benefits, professional development, training, and so much more. Once an employee is hired, there are a range of different rules and regulations that guide whether they can be fired. In some countries, for instance, letting an employee go requires paying as much as year’s salary in severance. Yet the reality is that your business needs can change, and the ability to respond with an agile staffing model is essential. Staff augmentation lets global companies adapt their strategies to the changing needs of any market. Add headcount, cut costs, focus on new skills, or get hands on board to complete a project quickly—without unnecessary legal challenges from hiring and firing or unnecessary costs.

Keep Oversight of Internal Processes

Adding outside staff means you’re trusting someone outside your employee pool with key systems. Outsourcing can add another layer of concern. With staff augmentation, you know your core processes and change management requests will be followed. Simply submit this information to the staff augmentation partner, and all IT talent will be screened for a perfect match. Implementing best practices and staying compliant across multiple markets can be challenging, but staff augmentation simplifies the process.

Staying competitive in a global market requires a staffing model that can support your growth. Whether you’re investing in new technologies or taking your brand into new markets, there are a variety of ways staff augmentation can help.

Ready to learn more about staff augmentation?

Liz Alton is a B2B technology and digital marketing writer and content strategist. She has worked with a variety of brands including Google, Twitter, Adobe, Oracle, and HP, and written for publications including Forbes. She is a regular contributor to Connected, Connection’s official blog.

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