It's not easy to find tech specialists who have exactly the skills you need to complete a project. Especially in today's market, where businesses that do find the right talent grapple with the costs. Tech resource expenses are shooting up while companies are struggling to adjust their staffing budgets to keep up.
Worse, it's not unheard of for companies to go through a lengthy and costly recruitment process only to come up with a software development team that underdelivers.
Fortunately, staff augmentation offers a way to speed up the process, reduce costs, and buffer the risks.
What is staff augmentation? This hiring method provides quick and easy access to pre-screened tech talent. Keep reading to learn more about how it works and how you can use it to your advantage.
Cost per hire depending on fulfillment method:
External contract recruiter
$10,736
Internal talent acquisition (TA) team
$14,318
Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) firm
$8,961
Source: SciBio
What is Staff Augmentation?
The staff augmentation meaning revolves around temporarily bringing in external personnel to work with your in-house staff. It allows businesses to expand their capacity and complete projects without the costly processes and commitments associated with traditional hiring. Of course, there are other ways to bring in outside help on projects, too, so let's look at the finer details.
How exactly is staff augmentation different from in-house staffing, freelance hiring, and outsourcing? With staff augmentation, you will work with a firm with a carefully selected talent pool. The firm will help you find the right staff for your project, but you can still run your own interview and selection process (but from a pool of pre-vetted talent).
Staff augmentation
In-house team
Augmented team
Management
CEO/CTO/PM (in-house)
Staff augmentation: definition and illustration of how it works
Although the external personnel are hired via a third-party agency, they will still operate as a part of your team and under your direct management. And you can let them go once the project is completed with no hassles.
In contrast, in-house staffing and freelance hiring require hunting for candidates your company has to vet. You must also provide office space, equipment, and benefits to in-house recruits.
With traditional outsourcing, the external hires often work independently or separately from your team. You won't have direct involvement or supervise the project's progress
This table summarizes the differences between staff augmentation, in-house staffing, freelance hiring, and outsourcing.
Availability of talent
Speed of recruitment
Degree of managerial control
Staff Augmentation
Provides access to pre-vetted specialists, expands the talent pool abroad
Allows companies to select from pre-vetted talent pools and hire specialists, typically within two weeks
Allows companies to manage the augmented specialists as part of their in-house team
In-House Staffing
Commonly limits access to specialists living in close proximity to the workplace
Requires a lengthy recruitment process that involves advertising for the position, handling, and screening applications, and vetting candidates from scratch
Enables full managerial control of the in-house hires
Freelance Hiring
Expands the talent pool abroad, but finding qualified specialists can be a challenge
Requires a recruitment process that can be as lengthy as that of in-house staffing
Allows companies to manage the extended team as they would their in-house staff
Outsourcing
Provides access to teams that can operate independently, expands the talent pool abroad
Offers access to pre-vetted specialists, or requires recruiting from scratch (depending on the outsourcing partner)
Takes managerial duties off the companies' hands, as outsourced teams operate independently
Staff augmentation services definition: optimizing talent acquisition
The staff augmentation model offers a flexible approach to meeting an organization's talent needs by providing access to a diverse pool of professionals categorized into:
- Commodity resources: These individuals typically perform routine tasks and are cost-effective for large-scale, repetitive work, such as data entry or basic IT support.
- Skill-based resources:These professionals possess specific technical proficiencies required for specialized projects, ensuring quality and efficiency in their execution. Examples include software developers, network engineers, and data analysts.
- Highly skilled resources:These experts bring advanced expertise and strategic insights, often critical for complex, high-stakes initiatives. They include project managers, architects, and consultants with deep industry knowledge.
- Consultative resources:These professionals offer advisory services and strategic planning, helping organizations navigate complex business challenges and technology transformations. One example of this staff augmentation model is CTO-as-a-service.
By augmenting their in-house staff in various situations and for different purposes, businesses can rapidly respond to changing market demands and technological advancements, ensuring they remain competitive and innovative.
Let's identify the staff augmentation model your business needs right now.
Contact us today!
How staff augmentation works
The easy way to define staff augmentation is to look at an example scenario.
A startup has successfully launched its product and onboarded new clients. However, to keep up the momentum and introduce new product features, additional software engineers with specialized skills are needed.
Instead of hiring in-house engineers, they choose to work with a staff augmentation firm to bring in the necessary talent and save funds by hiring specialists from renowned outstaffing locations with lower price tags. They can scale back once the project is completed, operating with only the staff they need, all without undertaking messy layoffs.
Another great way to offer a staff augmentation definition is by showing how the process works. Let's break down the steps to a successful staff augmentation policy.
How staff augmentation works
Identify your needs
Choose the right staff augmentation firm
Assess the candidates
Onboard the augmented staff members
Provide ongoing support
Advantages of Staff Augmentation
Sometimes, taking on full-time employees just doesn't make sense when you are looking to achieve a target quickly and then maintain it. This is where staff augmentation firms can help. Let's take a look at some of the benefits.
Speed of hiring and cost efficiency
Traditional hiring involves recruitment processes that can be excessively costly. You'll have to advertise for the post and pay long HR salaries. You may even have to hire headhunters to search for hard-to-find specialists.
Full-time in-house employees need office space, equipment, and benefit packages. And scaling down can be tricky, as you could end up incurring costs for staff you no longer need or having to pay out for layoffs.
On the other hand, staff augmentation allows you to cut down the recruitment process by starting out with a selection of pre-vetted specialists. And because you're not committing to the new hires for the long term, you won't be scaling down, which will be easy and painless for everyone involved.
Staff augmentation pricing model according to worldwide hourly rates
Flexibility and scalability
Businesses need to stay adaptable to shifting market conditions and fluctuating workloads. But this is not always easy, especially for those operating within industries that experience talent shortages. Because companies don't have to commit to permanent staffing, they can take more risks and innovate faster.
This flexibility allows businesses to quickly adapt to market changes, experiment with new technologies, and pivot strategies without the long-term financial and logistical burdens of full-time hires.
By leveraging outstaffing, firms can allocate resources more efficiently, focusing on innovation and growth rather than being constrained by the complexities of permanent staffing and potential layoffs.
Upskilling in-house teams
Staff augmentation also allows in-house teams to enhance their skills and knowledge. Working alongside specialized external talent allows existing employees to learn new techniques, technologies, and best practices.
This continuous learning fosters a culture of growth and development within the organization, ultimately leading to a more skilled and adaptable workforce.
Consider a retail company aiming to enhance its website's customer experience with AI chatbots.
By collaborating with a staff augmentation firm specializing in AI, the company's developers gain expertise in AI algorithms and techniques, ensuring that this new knowledge remains in-house and is retained even after the collaboration with the external specialists concludes.
Access to niche expertise
Finding individuals with highly specialized skills or niche expertise through traditional hiring methods may require too much time, impeding your product development and market entry goals.
In this respect, staff augmentation companies have access to a vast network of professionals with diverse backgrounds and expertise.
This enables businesses to quickly find the right talent for specific projects or tasks, ensuring they have the necessary skills to effectively tackle even the most complex challenges.
Do you need a skilled, rare expert on board quickly?
Contact us, Giraffe Software will extend your team promptly!
Challenges of Staff Augmentation
Staff augmentation has its share of challenges. But you can overcome them with the right strategies.
Collaboration
Augmented staff often work from a remote location. This can make collaboration a bit challenging, especially if there's a time difference. Companies can overcome this by:
- Providing collaboration tools
- Running an efficient project management system
- Holding regular meetings and video conferences
You can deal with the time difference by:
- Identifying optimal time windows (perhaps early morning for you and early evening for the remote team).
- Prioritize working hour flexibility as a critical requirement, and we're confident you'll find a provider that can accommodate that.
- Giving in advance notice for critical events that may require adjusting work hours (such as product launches). You can occasionally offer bonuses or extra days off in such cases.
- Try leveraging asynchronous video and audio communication tools (Loom, Vidayrd, Snagit, and similar) to optimize efficiency for you and your team. These tools can also be valuable assets for future onboarding processes, making task delegation smoother and more scalable.
It also helps to clearly define roles and set standard operating procedures that both the internal and external staff can follow.
Integration
Integrating external staff into an existing team can result in issues like skill mismatches and cultural clashes. Companies can overcome this by carefully vetting the candidates' qualifications, communication styles, and values. They should also run onboarding processes that effectively immerse the external staff into the company's processes.
Ensure all these considerations are documented and promptly provided to your outsourcing partner.
Cultural and mindset alignment
Cultural alignment is crucial to the success of your project. Your existing team already has an established way of doing things, communication style, values, and work ethics.
Bringing in people who don't align with your existing culture and team dynamics can cause misunderstandings and project disruptions.
With staff augmentation, you can select a staffing firm that understands the importance of cultural and mindset alignment. They can handpick candidates who would fit nicely into your company culture while bringing a level of diversity that boosts your in-house team's creativity and innovative spirit.
Data security
To complete projects, businesses have to share pertinent information with their employees. This presents security risks that are magnified when working with external staff.
You can double down on protecting your data and intellectual property by dealing only with reputable staffing partners, securing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), monitoring data access, and sharing information on a need-to-know basis.
Now that you've weighed staff augmentation's pros and cons, let's consider when to use it.
Common Uses of Staff Augmentation
When considering various staffing solutions, knowing the IT staff augmentation meaning can help organizations make informed decisions about workforce expansion. This is particularly true for the tech industry, where 64% of tech leaders claim job candidates fail to meet their skill requirements.
Staff augmentation is especially helpful in the following instances:
- Reduce talent management costs: Staff augmentation allows companies to access talent pools in regions with lower labor costs, addressing the financial strain caused by economic downturns and global crises.
- Speeding up product launch: Augmented staff reduces time-to-market (TTM) without lengthy recruitment, swiftly filling skill gaps in in-house teams.
- Handling a demand surge A surge in customer demand may increase the workload for the internal teams. Extra hands maintain output quality amidst increased customer demand.
- Accessing specialized skills: When existing employees lack the necessary skills, staff augmentation provides a solution by sourcing highly qualified specialists like AI architects, DevOps engineers, cloud developers, and more.
Tech resource expenses are shooting up
Demand for tech talent was up by 50% to 60% in 2022-2023.
Additional costs of new resources came 30% to 40% in 2022-2023.
Meanwhile, IT salary budgets have only increased by 10% to 12% y-o-y.
The new benchmark salary is set at 30% higher than pre-COVID levels.
Source: CIO
Many businesses globally leverage staff augmentation to achieve business success more affordably, from small bootstrapped startups to industry giants like Airbnb, Uber, Microsoft, and IBM. Here are several examples from the Giraffe Software portfolio:
REM Waste
REM Waste, a UK-based waste management company, benefited from our team of eight engineers who rolled out an MVP for their CRM platform in just four months, saving the company 38% in costs compared to local hiring.
Results
3 days
To assemble the initial team
5 months
To launch an MVP
38%
Lower budget compared to local rates
Aconi GmbH
Aconi GmbH, based in Germany, saved 29% of their hiring budget by utilizing our expert developers. Six Giraffe team members assisted in creating a custom ERP system, which was transformed into a SaaS product that Aconi now sells to others. A mobile version of the ERP platform developed within the next 9 months.
Results
1 week
To assemble the team
2 months
To build a kanban module demo
29%
Of costs saved
Looxis
Looxis, also based in Germany, achieved a 29% budget saving with assistance from Giraffe. Our team helped this gift shop venture into the digital space, launching as a full-featured eCommerce store.
Results
2 weeks
To assemble the team
2 months
To build an online store
29%
Of budget saved
More and more organizations will see the need for a reliable tech partner. Allow us to introduce one company that you can turn to.
Why Choose Us: Our Approach and Benefits
Our Benefits
Years on the outstaffing market
7+
Completed outstaffing projects
120+
Number of possible hires
Unlimited
Position closing date
Up to 2 weeks
Senior and mid-level experts
80%
Talent pool
30K+ experts
Giraffe Software, a trusted software development company, has a track record of helping tech teams grow with reliable IT staff augmentation services. We have grown rapidly since our company was established in 2016.
IT salary budget savings
Junior level
Up to 52%
Middle level
Up to 45%
Senior level
Up to 31.43%
Market demand and happy clients have pushed us to expand our expertise and take on even more challenging projects. Here's why you should work with us:
We make it easy
Seven days after your initial request, we can already organize interviews with pre-vetted candidates. Because we already did the hard work of putting together a pool of highly qualified specialists, you can have your team in as little as two weeks.
We cherry-pick top-notch tech specialists
Our talent pool is made up of 80% middle and senior specialists. And we rigorously screen newcomers. This means you'll never have to deal with a staff member who does not deliver.
We adapt to your hiring needs
We don't set any hiring limits. Whether you need to assemble a team from scratch or hire a few individuals, we can help you. You can also hire staff for short-term or long-term arrangements.
We go easy on your budget
You gain access to first-rate talent at half the rate you would normally pay in the US and UK. We also absorb many of the costs that come with traditional hiring, such as HR and hardware.
As mentioned earlier, a UK-based waste management company faced setbacks when their initial developers failed to deliver an error-free MVP, depleting much of their budget. However, we stepped in and successfully turned the tide by rapidly developing an MVP within a limited budget and timeframe. This solution proved successful, enabling the client to secure investments for further development.
Clients appreciate our partnership
Clients value our partnership. As a reliable technology partner, we boast an impressive track record backed by consistent positive feedback from companies that regularly hire IT experts and collaborate with us daily. Clutch reviews confirm our reputation. Also, here's what Stacy Flick, CEO at REM Waste, had to say about our recent collaboration:
Client's Feedback
“The outstanding team at GiraffeSoftware delivered an exceptional performance. They adeptly handled a demanding project encompassing Laravel, Vue, AWS, and WordPress for our blog. Their proficiency in rewriting our web application and addressing all existing issues was truly praiseworthy. The result was the creation of an MVP and post MVP that facilitated a digital transformation for our offline business. We highly recommend them for a full cycle of development! Excited about the prospect of ongoing collaboration with GiraffeSoftware!”
Stacy Flick
CEO at REM Waste
Conclusion
For businesses exploring flexible staffing options, understanding the staff augmentation meaning can provide valuable insights into its benefits. We hope our article has helped you achieve that.
Whether you need to speed up time-to-market or salvage a failing project, staff augmentation offers a cost-effective solution. In a matter of weeks, you can start working with developers who have undergone extensive vetting and have a proven track record of expertise.
Partner with Giraffe Software to maximize the benefits of staff augmentation Contact us to get started!
Frequently
Asked
Questions
IT staff augmentation involves bringing in external hires to work with the internal teams.
While traditional hiring involves lengthy recruitment processes that will have you searching far and wide for candidates you will have to vet on your own, staff augmentation means working with a firm that will help you quickly find the tech specialists you need from their pre-screened talent pool.
Staff augmentation allows companies to bring in the extra hands they need to complete a project and meet deadlines. Project managers can maintain a high level of control by managing external hires just like they manage internal staff.
Companies can significantly reduce their overhead by eliminating expenses related to office space, hardware, recruitment, and turnover.
Additionally, lower development rates in nearshore locations contribute to substantial savings, allowing companies to manage their budgets more effectively. This combination of factors makes staff augmentation an attractive option for businesses looking to optimize costs while accessing top talent.
As the staff augmentation definition suggests, it's a recruitment solution that enables companies to hire specialists for specific periods, without the need for long-term contracts.
This approach allows businesses to easily scale their teams up or down as required, providing the flexibility to adapt to changing project demands and market conditions.
By leveraging staff augmentation, companies can quickly access the expertise they need, whether it's for short-term projects, seasonal workloads, or addressing skill gaps while maintaining control over their workforce and operating costs.
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AUTHOR
Prystupa Eugene
Co-Founder
Eugene is a Co-Founder and CTO at Giraffe Software. He is seasoned technology executive with over 10 years of experience in the industry. Eugene leads the development and execution of the company's technology strategy, driving innovation and ensuring alignment with business goals.
Aligned in both project goals and work style, Giraffe Software has proven to be a productive, cost-effective partner. Their clear communication and adaptability have earned them an expanded scope.
Johannes Renaud
Director, LOOXIS GmbH
Their reliability, tech expertise and quality of service set them apart. Giraffe Software is responsive and accommodating, establishes a smooth workflow through open communication.
James Lenoble
CEO, GrowMindGrow
I am happy I can finally start gaining traffic and fulfill my goals. The vendor's collaboration method has been a strength, as they listen carefully to ensure complete understanding of objectives and challenges.
Ori Levi
Owner, Sosimple
We liked their work so much we've brought them onboard other software development projects. Giraffe Software's project management, rates, and quality of code were all excellent.
Johan van der Walt
President and CEO, Evosolve
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