Top Tips to Ensure Successful Team Augmentation
With more companies turning to team augmentation to enhance the technical expertise of working teams, today’s article delves into some of the best practices that your organisation can implement to ensure your team augmentation project is successful.
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Worldwide, the technology sector is experiencing a shortage of skilled workers, with Randstad reporting that by 2030 we could be facing a global shortage of more than 85 million tech workers. Difficulty competing for the best talent on the market has prompted many companies to turn to team augmentation, whereby companies essentially outsource talent with specific IT skills to carry out once-off or even long-term projects. Team augmentation can be a great option when it comes to expanding the abilities of your team, saving businesses valuable time and resources on recruitment processes, while ensuring you find the best talent required to fill the team’s specific skills gap. However, since team augmentation requires integrating staff from a third-party, organisations can sometimes face challenges like communication gaps, differences in work cultures, lack of understanding of internal business processes. That's why it's important to carry out best practices for team augmentation, some of which we outline below.
Onboarding
Having a good onboarding process is perhaps one of the most important stages of integrating the augmented team member. Ensure your organisation provides sufficient training on the existing technologies, processes and policies in place. It may also be a good idea to provide them with documentation outlining project processes and procedures to help them get up to speed quickly and better integrate with the business, as well as ensuring consistency across the team.
Set Clear Objectives
Clearly outline the goals and responsibilities of the augmented team member, as well as the other team members involved with the project. It’s important that everyone has a clear role and knows what tasks they are responsible for, to keep momentum and foster accountability. Establish KPI’s to measure and track the team’s progress on the project over time.
Communicate Frequently
Augmented staff often work on a remote or hybrid model, so clear, continuous communication is imperative to drive project progress. Make sure they understand expectations, deadlines and priorities. Provide them with regular updates and feedback to keep them up-to-date and on track. You want them to feel engaged and part of the team in order to keep them motivated and driven.
Manage Confidentiality & Security
When it comes to dealing with augmented staff, there tends to be a degree of concern surrounding data security with having to share sensitive information. To minimise such risks, it’s a good idea to use secure communication channels and a document repository like SharePoint. That way you will be able to control the level of information accessible to the augmented staff member and reduce the risk of data breaches. It’s also important to conduct the necessary security training to educate augmented staff on security policies, protocols and best practices so they know how to safeguard your data.
If you would like to learn more about team augmentation, get in touch with one of our experts today. Alternatively, you can check out our team augmentation FAQ page.
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