Staff augmentation can be a lifeline to ongoing project teams and organizations with large transformations underway. It provides an opportunity to access the wealth of knowledge and experience that exists outside of your organization. The ever-changing technology landscape has led to a general rise in outsourcing of roles across IT and L&D departments, and while every organization follows its own digital transformation journey, there is a tremendous opportunity for your employees to learn new skills when paired with individuals from outside of your organization. This includes sharing best practices gained from projects, organizations, and industries with which your staff may not have experience.
If you are looking for an effective way to transform your organization’s approach to technology implementations, staff augmentation could be the answer.
5 Key Benefits of Building Your Training Team with Staff Augmentation
Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach for most large enterprises, there are economies of scale to staff augmentation. In many cases, staff augmentation can be an effective solution to a short-term requirement for experienced and skilled employees.
1. Experienced Professionals for All Stages of a Project
Most digital transformation projects or system implementations are subject to extremely tight deadlines and typically have an aggressive go-live date established before the project starts. Stakeholders expect to meet all milestones and deadlines agreed upon during the planning phase. To meet those expectations, an organization must consider the time it will take to prepare their employees who have varied levels of experience. In some cases, employees have no experience working on a digital transformation or system implementation project and are learning the intricacies of a new system and approach in real time.
Given the length of time it could take to train employees and get them up to speed, organizations are finding value in augmenting their team with experienced professionals who can join a project at any point and get up to speed quickly. Individuals with this expertise can help alleviate the pressure on your internal team and foster an environment for knowledge transfer, allowing for better success on an overall project.
2. Specialized Skillsets for Each Implementation
During the implementation phase, organizations need a project team that combines individuals with business expertise and those skilled in using specific systems or technologies. However, in many cases, the required system experience is simply not available internally. Staff augmentation offers a significant advantage by bringing in individuals with specialized project expertise.
This approach enables you to review the industry and select individuals to support your project based on their skillset and experience with a particular system or software. It enhances the knowledge base of your existing team and addresses any potential gaps. Consequently, this helps to upskill your existing employees, ensuring they can seamlessly transition to business-as-usual post-implementation.
3. Minimizing Business Disruption
The aim of minimizing disruption can be achieved by spreading the workload across various individuals and teams. An implementation or transformation of any kind causes disruption throughout an organization, regardless of how much effort is put into minimizing it and adhering to the project plan.
Each person involved in the project, whether directly or indirectly, faces increased demands, adding to already stretched workloads. Bringing in temporary colleagues to provide additional support facilitates a smooth transition from one system to another, without overloading your employees during an already stressful period.
4. Effective ROI Through Short-Term Colleagues
Ultimately, all projects and investments are judged by their return, and the best way to maximize ROI is to reduce all additional expenditure. Hiring on a project-by-project basis is an effective way of managing your bottom line.
The idea of one-off costs for staff augmentation can be daunting for a business, and many people question whether it would make more sense to hire a full-time employee who will remain on staff post-implementation. However, this may not always be the best solution, given that internal organizations likely have IT and L&D teams that, upon project completion, will have gained a significant amount of experience. Every project operates within an overall project budget and substantial investments in learning and talent solutions may limit the funds available to support long term learning programs with full-time IT and L&D teams.
5. Recruiting Top International Talent
One thing we have observed in recent years is the flexibility that remote working provides, not only to individuals, but also to the business. We have begun to embrace this and the value that it brings us in reaching the best individuals in their field and across the globe. We are no longer restricted to a specific location and instead we have the luxury of identifying the best candidate for the project, regardless of where they are based. This provides the opportunity to learn from individuals spread geographically, who we may never have encountered in the past, and gain best practices from projects across the globe.
Staff augmentation can be an incredibly useful way of supporting a business through any significant change, and in particular, through technology and system implementations.
To learn more about this topic or hear how GP Strategies has supported staffing needs on large systems transformation initiatives, contact us.
About the Authors
