What is Team Augmentation? 

Globally it is becoming increasingly difficult to find skilled workers, with 81% of Irish employers reporting difficulty attracting skilled talent, according to ManpowerGroup. This is where Team Augmentation comes in. Team Augmentation, also known as staff augmentation, involves using a third-party organisation to outsource talent to fill current skills gaps in your team. Staff can be contracted for once-off or even longer-term projects that require a specific skillset such as cloud engineering, AI specialist, software development or business analysis. The third-party organisation takes care of the entire recruitment process, perfectly matching the right talent to your business and project requirements, helping businesses tackle the IT skills shortage in the most effective way so teams can get to work as quickly as possible.  

What are the benefits of Team Augmentation? 

Below we discuss some of the key benefits of team augmentation

Time & Cost Efficiency – Outsourcing staff recruitment helps save your business the time, effort and costs associated with the entire hiring process from onboarding to training. It also means you can quickly integrate skilled staff to address your project needs, which can help reduce time-to-market for your product or service. 

Access to Niche Skills – Team Augmentation allows companies to access a vast talent pool with specific technical skills that may not be available in-house and may be difficult to find externally. This means businesses can easily enhance the technical knowledge and abilities of their teams for specific projects. 

Innovation – Integrating augmented staff brings fresh skills, ideas and perspectives to teams which can help foster a culture of creativity and innovation, as well as promoting continuous learning by facilitating knowledge sharing. 

Flexibility – Team Augmentation enables companies to scale their teams up or down based on specific project and business needs without the need to hire permanent or full-time employees.  

How to know Team Augmentation is for you 

You require a specific skillset temporarily – If you are working on a once-off or short to medium term project that requires a specialised skillset that you don’t have in-house, Team Augmentation is a good option as you only need to retain that worker for the duration of the project. 

You need extra staff but have a restrictive budget – Team Augmentation is a much more resource and cost-effective way to hire staff so if you are working with a strict budget, it may be the solution to your recruitment needs. 

You have to hire talent quickly – If you need to hire extra staff quickly, to help you meet a tight project deadline, for example, team augmentation may be for you. The company providing the augmented team member will help find the talent you need quickly and take care of the recruitment process so you can integrate new staff and get to work as soon as possible. 

If you would like to find out more about whether team augmentation is right for your organisation, check out our recent blog ‘Is Team Augmentation the Right Choice for Your Business?’ 

How do I get started with team augmentation? 

With over 25 years' experience helping organisations fill their IT skills gap with Team Augmentation, we have the expertise to help you get started. Find out more by getting in touch with one of our experts today.