Labor market is a field full of opportunities when looking at organizational strategies. More specifically, when it comes to outsourcing, new methods and options are dramatically arising. Indeed, the general trend of globalization and the pandemy has urged companies to hire remotely. Staff augmentation is one of these trends in today’s business.
This article will provide an overview of this particular outsourcing model.
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Table of Contents
What is staff augmentation ?
Staff augmentation is an HR outsourcing strategy. Basically, it allows a company to supplement its in-house team to fit specific project demands and boost the capacity of the organization. Usually, companies leverage staff augmentation to perform particular tasks on a temporary basis.
There is different schemes in which companies uses this strategy:
Staff augmentation could also be divided in the three following categories:
- Commodity: You need to supplement you in-house team without any specific skillset.
- Skilled: You need some specific skills but not at a critical level.
- Highly skilled: You need advanced skills that can be attained only through significant training and experience.
Staff augmentation models
There is three different modalities and it all depends of the location of your workers. It could be onshore or in-country, nearshore or offsore.
Onshoring
In that case, your team or your employee is located in the same country as your in-house team.
This model is the most costly. However, the main advantage of this strategy is that team members will share same language, culture and national regulations.
Nearshoring
Nearshore staff augmentation comes into play when your augmented team is located in the same time zone as your in-house team. for exemple, we call nearshoring a US company hiring in Brazil.
This model enables the company to cut costs without infringing on communication as both zones have similar time zone coverage.
offshoring
Offshore staff augmentation simply means that your external team is in a different country and time zone coverage.
It is a great option to cut costs. If in most cases, cultural and language can be barriers, it should be considered case by case. Indeed, and for instance, Portuguese companies could take advantage by doing offshoring in Brazil as languages are similar.
Pro of doing staff augmentation
Staff augmentation is a winning strategy to fill gaps in your workforce. The main objective is usually to reduce some obstacles and costs but you will need to balance between the pro and cons of choosing this strategy.
Skillset
A company that required a specific expertise can go for staff augmentation and pull in specific skillset on a per-project basis, rather than hire new employee.
Agile scalability
To help manage any turbulent waters in today’s business, it is necessary to swiftly and efficiently scale resources on demand. It offers the opportunity to add resources when and where you need it.
Cutting employment hassles:
By using this strategy, a company can cut the employment routine such as setting up a local legal entity, manage payroll or bearing the cost of infrastructure.
Trial period:
When you find a candidate with the right skills for your project, especially if your project becomes a long-term project, it makes sense to hire this talent. Staff augmentation allows you to try out potential team member.
Worldwide Talent Pool
When using this strategy, you have no geographical limitation. The staff can be augmented with highly skilled global talent.
Cons of doing staff augmentation
However, it doesn’t fit for every company. Some of the backdraws are the following:
Higher long-term costs
Over time, a contrator working with the placement agency may cost more than a permanent staff.
Lack of internal knowledge
When you are working on a project with a client, any one new will need to catch up to fill in the knowledge gap. You will need to ensure that everyone is up to date and get the necessary depth of historical knowledge about both client and project.
Dependence on third party
As your candidate is not your employee, there is a dependance on the third-party organization you are working with.
What are the alternatives?
Software Outsourcing
Software outsourcing is when a company delegates the control over a specific project to third-party organizations.
Compared to this strategy, staff augmentation enables you to keep the management and monitoring of your team.
Dedicated teams
Dedicated team is slightly different from staff augmentation. Indeed, you will collaborate with local employees that will supplement your existing team. It is a partnership model widely used in case of long-term projects
Such as the model above, staff augmentation differs in terms of management : dedicated teams are usually supervised by the thirs-party organization.
4 steps to hire in Brazil
You have decided to outsource a project? Find below 5 steps to understand how to hire talents in Brazil with a staff augmentation partner.
Establish the scope of responsability
Staff augmentation is a winning strategy for one-time project. However and before any other steps, the most important is to define how the responsabilities will be shared between you and the third-party organization.
Identify your requirements
What skills do you need ? What is the scope of the project ? Which profile do you want ? All these questions need to be assessed to find the Brazilian talent that will best match your needs. Supplement your in-house team is recommended for short and specific project. Therefor, it is pivotal to identify your own talent gap in order to bridge in it with staff augmentation.
Source and onboard your perfect candidate
In today’s IT business,it is more relevant to source candidates via some platforms as LinkedIn, Meetups and so on. Once you have found your perfect match, you can onboard your candidate so he can learn about your daily processes and procedures.
ContInued staff support
Ongoing support needs to be be provided in order to ensure cooperation is as efficient as possible. As communication is a key asset incollaboration success, building a strong and ever-improving relationship is pivotal.
How can Europortage benefits your business ?
We are an Employer of Record (EOR) company in Brazil. With our EOR and Payroll Services, we hire and onboard your candidates while managing compliance. Besides, we manage your payroll in Brazil. Do you have a project in Brazil ? Contact us now!
