10 Staff Augmentation Myths: Unveiled and Addressed

In the modern business environment, keeping up with advanced technology is crucial. Many companies find it hard to scale and expand quickly relying merely on in-house IT teams. Recruiting new personnel and enhancing the tech expertise of the existing staff takes time and resources. 

Thankfully, outstaffing offers the opportunity to fill the talent gaps and grow quickly and flexibly as the business process requires. IT outstaffing, or staff augmentation, empowers firms to hire tech talent worldwide and manage them directly until the assignment is fulfilled. 

The popularity of the outstaffing model is on the rise and continues to grow incrementally. Experts forecast that the global expenditures on staff augmentation services will reach $81 billion by 2025. 

However, while the outstaffing hiring model delivers a range of acknowledged benefits, numerous misconceptions prevent businesses from adopting this approach. We’ll debunk the most common myths about technical staff augmentation to help you enjoy its advantages to the fullest.

The Reality Behind 10 Outstaffing Myths

So, why are companies cautious about using IT team augmentation services? Let’s address the popular concerns and explore the real benefits of outstaffing.

1. Confusion of outstaffing and outsourcing concepts

Both outstaffing and outsourcing are external hiring models, where a company attracts independent professionals to perform certain tasks. Under both approaches, the engaged individuals or teams do not become part of the hiring organization. However, there is a substantial difference in responsibility. 

With outsourcing, you entrust the project or task to a service provider, who picks the team and controls the task completion. You may not have access to the development personnel, conducting all communication through the provider. 

Outstaffing, on the other hand, is a form of remote employment, where you can temporarily extend your personnel with one or more professionals who report directly to you. As a rule, such teams are officially employed by outstaffing agencies that offer their services to clients. 

This underpins the remarkable upside of the IT outstaffing model. You obtain the staff you are lacking for the required term, while all hiring and maintenance procedures rest on the service provider’s side. 

2. Outstaffing is exclusively for large companies

Another common misconception about IT staff augmentation is that it’s only favorable for big organizations. Many entrepreneurs believe that augmentation is reasonable only for complex projects and dictates the need for significant financial resources that only big businesses may possess. 

However, the juice of the team augmentation model lies in its exceptional flexibility and adaptability to specific demands. Tiny companies, startups, and other small to medium organizations may have fluctuating work volumes, making it inefficient to cultivate an extensive in-house team. 

With outstaffing, they can easily manage the team size and engage the talents based on the current workload. Furthermore, a small company can obtain access to niche experiences that may be unavailable in their region. 

3. Outstaffing is effective only for short-term tasks

Tech staff augmentation can be fruitful for both short-term and long-term assignments, as it is a highly scalable and flexible hiring model. You can engage a dedicated staff that will consistently perform the entire job. Gradually, the new personnel will immerse into the specifics of your business and boost the skills dictated by your assignment, ultimately enhancing their effectiveness. 

You can dynamically adapt your staff according to altering project demands. Finally, using IT outstaffing services for continual tasks is cost-effective since your expenditures only include the services you need, without extra costs on recruiting, onboarding, and administering in-house employees.

4. Only the IT sector can benefit from outstaffing

Indeed, the outstaffing model was initially adopted in the IT industry, as the area with a high demand for focused skills and expansion potential. However, as the advantages of the model gained vast acknowledgment, it has spread across the other sectors as well.

Finance, healthcare, education, human resources, customer service, and many other spheres can gain from this versatile recruiting solution. Companies across sectors can diversify their expertise, access a larger talent pool, and optimize their workforce. As a result, they will enhance internal operations and drive productivity.

5. Outstaffing will elevate expenses

Many businesses, especially small ones, fear that remote staff augmentation will inflict excessive costs. However, outstaffing can do quite the contrary – minimize expenses on recruiting and administering personnel. 

Thus, team augmentation empowers organizations to cut down on numerous direct and indirect costs including insurance and retirement benefits, paid vacations, development training, infrastructure, and other operational costs. Those expenditures are on the staff augmentation service provider’s side since the hired teams remain their official employees. 

6. Outstaffing can lead to poor quality

Organizations may share a common misbelief that the augmented team will fail to match the quality demands or a job’s timeline. However, IT outstaffing services understand these concerns and adequately address them.

Thus, agencies select professionals with a specific set of skills required to perform the task flawlessly. Furthermore, they check the expertise and experience of each candidate to ensure they can fulfill the job within the necessary timeframe. A reliable staff augmentation company guarantees a robust selection process, offering exclusively strong and capable specialists.

7. Outstaffing is risky

Companies may have a concern that hiring an external team will inflict the risks of security violations and data leaks. They fear that disclosing sensitive information to individuals who aren’t their official employees may increase the threat of data misuse. 

This is, however, not the case with professional team augmentation services. Trustworthy providers guarantee their candidates abide by the best practices in data safety and act according to contracts and non-disclosure agreements. 

Furthermore, the hiring companies can implement additional monitoring measures, such as limited access levels to augmented teams. 

8. Outstaffing doesn't provide much flexibility

Another faulty conviction about outstaffing is the lack of adaptability. Companies that share this belief may be unaware of the nature of the IT staff augmentation process. They might confuse it with traditional outsourcing, which can be less flexible due to rigid contracts and lower supervision over teams. 

Alleviating this misconception is as easy as understanding the essence of the staff augmentation process. It entails the opportunity to extend or shrink the team according to the job’s requirements or business growth. Customers can apply various outstaffing models based on either the project or a certain time interval. 

Moreover, outstaffing companies can deliver ongoing maintenance, additional resources, and other services according to the client’s demands. 

Regardless of your project scope, a staff augmentation service provider can select the adaptable cooperation model to optimize investments and outcomes.

9. Interaction with multicultural teams will be impeded

Cooperation with remote teams instills fear of potential misunderstandings because of cultural and language differences, varying time zones, and other disparities. These concerns even amplify if the team members are dispersed globally. 

However, staff augmentation companies alleviate potential communication issues by setting strict selection criteria. Thus, their candidates speak English and abide by global communication traditions. Service providers arrange interviews between clients and professionals to remove any doubts about smooth interaction and the possession of both soft and hard skills necessary for the job.

Furthermore, the reinforcing tendency for remote work infuses the advent of diverse methods for conducive online collaboration. Clients can utilize multiple project management tools, conduct regular status updates, and apply other approaches to even up the working process with the outstaffing team.

10. A lack of supervision over the job fulfillment

Business owners may think that engaging external professionals will reduce the ability to govern the project flow. This fear stems from the misbelief that augmented teams lack responsibility and understanding of the company’s goals. 

However, when organizations hire outstaffing teams, they can govern remote specialists directly, similar to their in-house employees. This is one of the significant benefits of staff augmentation over outsourcing. 

The hiring company can implement their normal management techniques, like team meetings, goal setting, reporting, monitoring, and more. The extensive supervision methods allow businesses to collaborate effectively and facilitate task fulfillment.

How to select the appropriate staff augmentation provider

As discussed above, a competent IT outstaffing service provider can successfully mitigate the potential concerns or issues associated with recruiting an external team. Therefore, it’s paramount to pick a qualified and reliable partner. 

How to find the right one? Consider the following essential steps.

Establish your demands and objectives

• What skill gaps do you have? Identify whether your business dictates extra tech skills, industry experience, or particular job requirements.
• What is the scope of your task? Outline the jobs to be done, the timeline, and the objectives of your project to find an optimal match.
• What are your financial constraints? Assess your funds for the augmented staff, including additional costs for integration.

Research potential partners

• Prioritize companies with strong domain expertise. If an IT team augmentation provider is familiar with your sector, they’ll better understand your challenges and aspirations.
• Review the providers’ track records. Explore their successful cases and check clients’ testimonials.
• Test their expertise in the technologies and capabilities you need. After all, this knowledge is fundamental to valuable results. Embrace the entire working process, including software development, project administration, data analysis, or other competence areas.

Evaluate the provider’s opportunities

• Does the company offer a large talent pool? Extensive pools with diverse skills grant higher flexibility in matching your needs.
• What are their recruitment and vetting processes? Ensure your potential partner applies stringent criteria to pick the most appropriate candidates.
• Can the provider promptly increase or shrink the outstaffing personnel based on your demands? Flexibility is your path to respond to altering workload.

Choose wisely

• Make your preliminary selections. Compare the potential providers based on their expertise, experience, prices, and interaction.
• Talk to their clients. Collect feedback on providers’ reliability, capacity, and customer delight.
• Negotiate your conditions. Discuss the conditions of the agreement and make sure to incorporate all the crucial parameters, such as pricing, deliverables, and timelines.

Final Thoughts on Software Development Staff Augmentation

Outstaffing has become a popular hiring method in numerous industries beyond IT. However, multiple businesses still underestimate the advantages of team augmentation. By debunking the common myths, we prove that outstaffing can provide scalability, cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and quality, with minimized threats and challenges.

To enjoy the benefits of IT staff augmentation, a company should meticulously select an outstaffing partner. Not all service providers are equal in terms of skills, experience, winning cases, talent pools, and recruiting and cooperation processes. You should assess those parameters to make an educated selection.

SDA is a software development company specializing in comprehensive solutions for your business and staffing services to drive your team. We offer top talent with vast domain expertise to handle jobs of any complexity and scope. Satisfied clients are the ultimate acknowledgment of our capabilities. Many of our customers keep coming back for new projects and ideas.

Contact us, and we’ll be happy to arrange a dedicated team for your job, meeting your exclusive demands and delivering valuable outcomes.