Staff Augmentation: Uncover Effective Growth Strategies for Your Company

What Is Staff Augmentation? 

In today’s business world, increasing the use of contingent workers is becoming more and more of a trend globally. Even though this isn’t a new practice because globalization has been making it easier to erase borders and fill roles worldwide when employees take vacation, fall ill, etc., contingent work is popping up in business models more than ever. 

Staff augmentation refers to the use of outside personnel on a temporary basis to meet the needs of your organization, increasing the capacity of your company and its ability to fulfill market demands. 

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why a company would use staff augmentation: 

• Increase in workload: there are often spikes in the amount of work (projects, customer demands, increased production needs, etc.) and staff augmentation can help fulfill these needs. 

• Temporary solve while you’re hiring: staff augmentation can help you train and meet business demands while you build a more permanent team. 

• Specialization: if you need skill sets that you don’t have in-house for a specific period of time. 

• Strategy: you can build teams with more flexibility and stay competitive thanks to speedier processes and a more agile model.  

Benefits of Staff Augmentation

Like any business growth strategy, staff augmentation has its pros and cons. Determining whether it’s right for your company and its specific needs is important. Let’s dive in. 

Pros: 

• Added value to projects and production

• Specific skill sets on a need-by-need basis

• On-demand workforce

• Staff augmentation can serve as a trial for potential full-time employees

Cons: 

• Lack of context and company knowledge that is hard to acquire in the short term

• Not great for long-term needs due to high turnover rates

• Increase in third-party dependency which may lead to quality risks over time 

Choosing the Model That’s Right For Your Company

Companies today generally use different models for their production needs, but when you’re considering staff augmentation it’s important to determine whether it’s right for you based on what you’re hoping to accomplish (business goals) and what’s important to your company over time. Every company and production process is different, so evaluating the pros and cons of each specific scenario before moving forward with staff augmentation is key. 

The different types of staff augmentation include commodity, skill-based and highly skilled. Commodity refers to when you need workers for a specific task, but they don’t need to be trained or necessarily require a specific skill set to perform the tasks. These include things like retail, manual labor, etc. Skill-based staff augmentation is for tasks that do require certain skills and is needed for things like copywriting, data processing, etc. Highly-skilled refers to the tasks that require a very specific type of skill set and training, and these are only available via highly qualified workers or after a certain period of intensive training.

Staff augmentation can be a powerful model for your company if you need to increase efficiency and meet the needs of an ever-changing market. More and more companies across industries are using this model across roles, and the benefits of properly implementing this strategy is undeniable.

Additional Business Growth Strategies:

A business growth strategy refers to the action plan that your company can implement to increase sales, revenue or boost the amount of customers. It’s important that you choose business growth strategies that fit your needs. This means taking a look at budget, goals, timelines, etc. Ideally, your strategy will also align with your brand positioning and include insights on your customers and audiences because today’s market landscape includes users whose behavior is constantly changing. 

When it comes to business growth, we generally refer to organic and inorganic growth. Organic growth refers to the natural expansion of your business through internal means like increasing sales and revenue, launching new services and products or introducing your business to new or expanding markets without depending on external factors. This growth is self-driven and comes from within your company, and is generally easier to manage than the inorganic growth that comes from external factors. 

Growth strategies include revenue growth, customer growth, marketing growth and product growth. Let’s take a look at each category: 

Revenue growth: this is a company’s plan to increase revenue over a predefined period of time. It could include monitoring finances more closely, analyzing and benchmarking market trends, and reaching out to other businesses for partnerships. Some of the specific tactics could include investing in training, leveraging technology, and implementing low-cost strategies across the board. 

Customer growth: this strategy looks to increase customer engagement and acquisitions over time, and companies may want to make long-term investments to help this happen. Some of the basics include tracking customer churn rates, reconsidering pricing strategies to attract more customers, investing more in marketing and sales to attract new users, etc. Companies can also consider entering new markets to reach other audiences, adding new products and services to attract other sectors, etc. 

Marketing growth: companies can use marketing growth strategies to increase current  market shares and their TAM (total addressable market). It’s important to look into user personas, regions and other factors to see what type of market expansion is right for you. Some marketing growth strategy tactics overlap with those of revenue and customer growth and include things like rebranding, launching new products and services and considering franchising so that business owners can purchase franchises from you to help with overall expansion. 

Product growth: Adding new products and services or expanding existing ones via things like new features or revamps is a great way to grow your business. Product development and launches can help new audiences who weren’t engaging with your business before begin to do so. Companies can take a look at their current suite and see what the realistic possibilities are and what markets and audiences they want to target based on their preset growth goals. 

There are multiple strategies that you can implement to help grow your company, from revenue to customer to product growth plans. Staff augmentation, or the use of outside temporary workers to meet specific business needs, is another strategy that is growing in popularity. At Avalith, we are experts in helping businesses grow using staff augmentation. We've got simple solutions, from basic to advanced, tailored to your needs. Book a call with one of our experts to learn more about staff augmentation.