Staff Augmentation— What is it? Why do you need it?

What is Staff Augmentation? Your internal thesaurus may be thinking “consulting” or “outsourcing” are good synonyms, but Staff Augmentation has a few key differences that you want to be familiar with before you embark on your next big project.

If your company needs help managing or executing a project, you need to begin with dedicated, competent staff to get the job done right. The problem is, you may not be able to afford to move your existing resources from their current projects. So maybe you’ve considered hiring. If your project is short, or hyper-focused, that may be a mistake. Why go through all the new-hire paperwork plus a lengthy onboarding process that requires training, especially if this work won’t last forever?

Does any of this sound familiar? Then you might want to consider your alternatives. Staff Augmentation is for organizations who need to bolster their existing resources to support projects that require expertise outside of their wheelhouse or consist of mostly temporary, highly-skilled work.

Cost savings is first on this list because it should be first on yours. Staff Augmentation with IES can save you opportunity costs you may have wasted by allocating your existing resources to the project, or to training new employees to do the job. It can also save real dollars you would have spent onboarding salaried employees with benefits. Staff Augmentation requires no benefits, no overtime, and no training time. You could even have your augmented staff only come to the job site when they’re needed, so there’s no need to shuffle your existing resources around or pay employees when they’re not needed.

Speaking of opportunity costs, how much time would you say your organization would spend looking for the perfect candidate or candidates for your project staff? Tack on the amount of time it would take to onboard and train them, and suddenly the hiring process has eaten up a lot of your time and energy that could have been used more efficiently. If efficiency is part of your company culture (and it should be), then Staff Augmentation should be on your radar.

Staff Augmentation is not outsourcing. With outsourcing, you hand over the project responsibilities and tasks to another organization, which can bring risk and unforeseen challenges. By augmenting your staff with IES, you can bring highly-skilled and well-trained individuals to work directly under your current leadership. This puts your organization in the driver’s seat (and you can think of your augmented staff as the friends in the backseat who hand you snacks and remind you when you have to turn). With an augmented staff from IES, you have full control of the project and direct oversight of your new, highly-skilled resources.