Business Growth Unleashed: The Complete Guide to Staff Augmentation in the Philippines
Introduction
As your business grows, you might encounter fluctuations in your workload. During peak seasons or when tackling substantial projects for particular clients, the demand for specific skills and resources may surpass the capacity of your current workforce. In such cases, you can hire new employees, but doing so may be detrimental in the long run.
Employing new full-time workers, after all, is associated with different challenges, mainly because it is a tedious and financially taxing process. Additionally, once the workload subsides or goes back to normal, you will end up having a surplus in your workforce – it means that you have too many employees, but many of them are idle or are not being assigned tasks.
The best solution for such a scenario is to try staff augmentation. This approach allows you to bring in external professionals on a short-term basis. Since they are already experienced, you can expect that they can seamlessly assimilate into your existing teams and help meet the temporary demand for knowledge and skills as you handle the influx in your workload.
When looking for augmentees, be sure to partner with a reliable company. Q2 HR Solutions is your trusted provider of staff augmentation services in the Philippines, so feel free to contact our team if you wish to work with us. To learn more about staff augmentation, read through the rest of this article.
Understanding Staff Augmentation Services in the Philippines
In a nutshell, staff augmentation is a strategic approach used by many businesses for many years already. It allows you to supplement your company's existing workforce with people from the outside who will be “hired” on a temporary or project-specific basis.
Many businesses request help from staff augmentation service companies to get a certain number of workers. It is a viable solution to address skills gaps or meet an increased demand, especially during peak seasons or extraordinary circumstances. Compared to hiring permanent employees, staff augmentation is more flexible and cost-effective.
The professionals you hire temporarily are called augmentees. Staff augmentation companies help ensure that these workers are well-experienced, allowing them to seamlessly work alongside your existing team and provide the services needed of them without any trouble.
One important thing when hiring augmented staff is to outline the terms of their service in their contracts. By doing so, you can easily let them go with no strings attached once the project is completed or the peak season is finally over.
Types of Staff Augmentation Services
Staffing solutions companies in the Philippines offer different types of augmentation services. Check out a few examples below:
Dedicated Team
In a “dedicated team” model, you can hire a group of professionals with specific skills to work exclusively on your project. They will work closely with your in-house staff and be managed as part of the internal team.
For example, one of your clients demands a specific service that is out of scope for your company. Instead of letting the client go, you can hire a dedicated team of augmented staff to work on that specific part of the project.
Time and Materials
The “time and materials” model is quite popular, too. In this approach, you need to pay for the actual hours spent by the external professionals. You will also be charged for any resources or materials they used to complete the project assigned to them.
This model is incredibly flexible, making it suitable for projects with evolving requirements or unclear deadlines. If the scope of the project suddenly changes during the development, you can easily adjust the work hours needed to be rendered by your augmented staff.
Project-Based Outsourcing
Project-based outsourcing involves hiring temporary professionals to work on a specific project. In this approach, you are required to define the specifics of the project, and the augmentees will have to complete it within the parameters outlined in their contract. The augmentees, in this case, can be hired as a team. However, there is nothing wrong with getting multiple individuals and then forming the group afterward.
Benefits of Staff Augmentation for Businesses
It depends on the type of business you have, but staff augmentation has been proven beneficial on many occasions. Here are a few of its advantages:
Flexibility in Workforce Scaling
Staff augmentation offers flexibility in workforce scaling. You can seamlessly scale your workforce up during peak seasons or when facing sudden increases in workload, allowing you to effortlessly meet project requirements without enduring the costs of hiring permanent employees.
Cost-Effectiveness
If you’ve been in the business for a while, you know that hiring and onboarding new full-time employees involves significant costs. Expenses related to recruitment and training can already be exorbitant; add to that the long-term costs of providing benefits and compensation to those permanent workers.
Staff augmentation eliminates or reduces these upfront expenses. You can work with providers of staff or team augmentation services in the Philippines, and they will be the ones to find temporary employees for you.
The individuals they’ll hire for you are already experienced and skilled. This means you save a ton because you no longer need to train them. The onboarding expenses can be inexpensive, too, because they are temporary employees who will leave as soon as the project is completed.
Access to Specialized Skills
Another good thing about staff augmentation is it enables you to tap into a diverse and extensive talent pool to supplement your internal team. By bringing in professionals with highly specialized skills and expertise, you can enhance the overall capabilities of your current workforce.
Also, since you have access to professionals with specialized skills, you can keep yourself updated with the latest industry trends and technologies. You can even gain a competitive edge against your competitors.
Employees You Can Hire With Staff Augmentation Services
In theory, you can hire any kind of professional through staff augmentation. However, some of the most in-demand augmentees are:
IT Experts
Staff augmentation for IT experts involves hiring professionals with specific skills and expertise in various tech-related fields, like advanced programming, cybersecurity, website creation and management, app development, and more. This is especially true when their IT department cannot handle those tasks or is preoccupied with their existing responsibilities.
Marketing Professionals
Some companies employ augmentees who are adept in marketing, both traditional and digital. These professionals are experts in different areas, such as social media management, online advertising, search engine optimization, ad management, and content creation.
Augmented marketing specialists are sometimes needed during peak seasons or when launching specific marketing campaigns. They contribute to campaign planning, execution, and analysis, ensuring a comprehensive and targeted approach to reaching their target audience.
HR Specialists
There are plenty of HR functions that can be left in the hands of augmented staff. Recruitment or talent acquisition, for example, can be accomplished by augmented HR specialists because these tasks require minimal involvement with sensitive information typically processed by members of the HR team.
Turn to a Reliable Staffing Solutions Company Today
Q2 HR Solutions is here to offer excellent staff augmentation services in the Philippines. Rest assured that we have the competence to provide you with different staffing solutions. We’ve been doing this for many years already, so you can expect us to have the right skills and knowledge to do the job swiftly without compromising quality.
Frequently Asked Questions About Staff Augmentation
What Is the Objective of Staff Augmentation?
Staff augmentation enhances a company's workforce by strategically incorporating external professionals with specific skills or expertise. Instead of hiring additional full-time employees, businesses can employ augmentees to address immediate needs. Doing so is faster and more cost-effective.
What Is the Staff Augmentation Process?
It is on a case-to-case basis, but staff augmentation usually involves several key steps. Initially, you need to identify the specific skills you need for the time being. Once done, you can then start searching for external professionals. You can tap recruitment agencies and staffing solutions providers, like Q2 HR Solutions, to help you with the process.
Is Staff Augmentation Considered Outsourcing?
You can call staff augmentation a form of outsourcing. However, compared to traditional outsourcing, staff augmentation allows external professionals to be integrated into your existing team and work closely with internal staff. Both you and the augmentees can be bound by a contract, too, that outlines the scope of work and length of services.
Conclusion
Staff augmentation is a strategic business approach that temporarily enhances your workforce. It is a crucial step done by many companies in lieu of hiring full-time employees. Finding augmented professionals is faster and cheaper than employing and onboarding permanent workers.
If you are looking for staff augmentation services in the Philippines, we are here to help. Contact us today at Q2 HR Solutions to learn how we can assist you.
