For some entrepreneurs, the term staff augmentation can feel like something absolutely new, but it is not. Staff augmentation is nothing but a type of outsourcing service. Nevertheless, it is the service that is now rising in popularity, and there are a lot of reasons for such a situation.
First of all, take alone the growth of the outsourcing market and the growing demand for such services all around the Earth. That growth is expected as 9.6% of CAGR rate growth from 2024 to 2030, which is more than just a big number. So, the request “staff augmentation Europe” now is found much more often than before. Secondly, businesses try to cut costs as much as possible. Finally, this is also a time-related issue.
Thus, we understand that people demand to know more about staff augmentation services, and we are here to help them with it.
What is staff augmentation?
In short, staff augmentation is a service when an outsourcing company provides one or a few of its specialists to help the customer work on its projects. It also means that the customer has its own team which is currently working, but instead of opening an in-house position, companies often prefer to contact companies that offer staff augmentation services.
Why is it so? First of all, the time issue we have mentioned. For instance, in the UK, the average time required to fill a tech position was 65 days! And the situation isn’t better in other highly developed countries with big tech markets.
Secondly, good specialists are difficult to find, as well as the competition for such professionals makes businesses raise salaries, which also doesn’t correlate with an urgent need to cut operational costs. Finally, sometimes business just needs a view from the side when it comes to considering strategy, especially in the case of technical decisions. This makes no sense to open a position, take a specialist for one project, and then what – fire him away after a couple of months? That’s where team augmentation in Europe enters the game.
What benefits does staff augmentation offer for business?
When it comes to choosing whether the service is needed, we all come to the matter of benefits you will get for what you pay. In the case of staff augmentation, it has many to offer.
- Resource optimization. Using staff augmentation from Europe vendors saves not only the time of your in-house recruiters and other staff from the HR department, but also it can save you money by not giving it to HR agencies you will have to hire to fill senior positions.
- Time-saving. The average position filling time is from 45 to 65 days, which is a lot, especially if you have to close the position here and now. On the other hand, when it comes to staff augmentation, you can expect to have your new employee ready to go within a few days. The only factor that can make this last longer is your requirements for the employee’s expertise and experience.
- Cost efficiency. We often mention that business always comes to cutting costs, because saved money is earned money. As we have already stated, the competitive conditions in the labor market make great specialists not only rare to be open to job offers but also costly. Really good professionals will not only ask for a good salary but also for all the social bonuses they can get from you, which is not on the table when we talk about staff augmentation.
- Flexibility. As you can see, staff augmentation also offers a lot of flexibility, especially in terms of the scalability of your business. You can hire two developers, two engineers, and two QAs, and when you see a need to scale up the team, just call your vendor and ask for a few more men to cover your needs. Imagine now how much effort you would have put into that if you had chosen to find in-house employees.
- Effectiveness. Augmented vendors always care about their reputation, because it’s their business to find new customers and keep them satisfied with their services. This also means that besides you will be able to communicate with augmented employees on your own to check out the project’s progress, you can also ask the vendor to audit or to report on the job done by the specialists whom you hired.
Staff augmentation concerns
Nothing is ideal in this world, nor is staff augmentation a magic wand. There are a few concerns that often stop business from using staff augmentation services.
Cultural differences and time zones
Obviously, many of the augmented specialists won’t be living in one country with you, which means their time zone can differ up to more than a dozen hours from yours. Also, these people have their cultural specifics, so at the beginning, communication can’t be as clear or easy as you could expect. Nevertheless, this doesn’t relate to the issue when you work with professionals.
Data security
Working on tech projects always means working with sensible and confidential information, which is also a valuable asset of your business. Letting people from the outside to access it is a difficult choice for many executives, at least psychologically. Nevertheless, as we have said before, this is all about professionalism and reputation.
Poor quality standards
This concern is always actual, as with any situation where you hire a contractor. We won’t talk much about it. Just always check out the real reviews about your potential vendor and only then start considering him as a partner.
Conclusion
As you can see, staff augmentation is a good option when you don’t want to spend weeks looking for an in-house employee, discuss salary, and provide long onboarding with a reasonable risk that all these efforts will be useless in the end. There are not many risks to consider, yet some concerns have to be resolved with the previous research on your potential vendor. Taking into account that staff augmentation offers numerous valuable benefits, we can recommend you choosing such a service for your business.
But where to find a reliable vendor who offers staff augmentation services? Well, look for trusted companies with a lot of proven cases, especially in your niche. One of such good examples in Europe is N-iX company, which works all around the world, has projects with Fortune 500 companies and offers a wide range of staff augmentation services.
