What is Staff Augmentation and How Can It Benefit Your Organization?

The outsourcing strategy called staff augmentation is an approach that greatly supports an agile business model. Staff augmentation vendors like ELB Learning provide on demand staffing for Learning and Development teams. Organizations can take advantage of on demand staffing to execute projects more efficiently and better meet business objectives in a flexible way. Staff augmentation vendors work with learning consultants who are ready to assist your organization with temporary talent solutions to fill the skill gaps in your business. Whether you need long-term or short-term staff—vendors work with you to make the most viable solution! 

Benefits to Staff Augmentation?

When working with a staff augmentation vendor, you can be assured that a qualified team will be working with you, following your business model. One of the greatest benefits of working with a staff augmentation vendor is the availability and access to a pool of talented and skilled professionals that are highly qualified and are open to aligning their duties to fit your requirements. Whether you need an entire team, or a few individuals to come aboard, some of the most requested job roles are: 

• Instructional Designers
• Technical Writers
• LMS Administrators
• Facilitators/Trainers
• And many more!

Staff augmentation services allow you to pull together talent quickly on a project-by-project basis and then relieve that talent once the project is completed. There are many benefits that come with relying on the staff augmentation methodology, including increased agility, increased flexibility, and the ability to source specialized talent. 

1. Increased Agility. L&D teams are constantly revising their strategies and creating improvements to their business goals that require new skills and talent that is not on your existing team, this is where staff augmentation can be extremely beneficial. Rather than taking the time the train current employees on new skills, you can depend on staff augmentation to support your team by bringing in people who already have the experience, knowledge, and capabilities to perform specific tasks. This saves you a great amount of time as your team can continue to focus on what they were originally trained to do, while the staff augmentation team can meet other deadlines. 
   
   
2. Increased Flexibility. A staff augmentation team can be brought in for a long-term business strategy, or to complete a short-term project. Once a project is completed and finished, their services may no longer be needed. A staff augmentation candidate, or team, will come to your organization prepared and provide a range of useful skills. This not only creates flexibility but has the potential to save your L&D sector money. It costs less to ask for on-demand staffing for a certain period of time than it does to outsource a full-time employee bound through a contract.  
   
   
3.  Ability to Source Specialized Talent. As new technologies emerge, L&D teams continue to revive their business strategies. There are many reasons why this can affect organizations and training programs, including the possibility of having a lack of resources, time, and employees available to build new training to fit those strategies. That’s why staff augmentation can be noted as the go-to solution. Embedding staff augmentation into your L&D strategy allows a variety of skills, strategizing, and management to attend to these problems for you, allowing your team to grow and thrive from its new capabilities. You work with your staff augmentation vendor to align business goals, learning and training needs, and other gray areas that need attention. 

Choosing a Staff Augmentation Vendor

There are differences between a traditional staffing agency and staff augmentation vendors, and our goal is to make sure you understand the differences. We want to make sure your organization receives the best services, and that begins with being able to differentiate between vendors that are specialists in L&D talent versus a standard agency. 

A creative L&D agency will continuously add value by working with you and your team to deliver talent as your needs change and evolve. Staff agencies tend to bring you talent without truly knowing what skills are needed for you to reach your unique business goals. Staff Augmentation vendors build a relationship with you and bring you staff who help create innovative strategies and skills as projects arise. L&D is a difficult sector in business that needs unique talent and skill, which is why your vendor has to be able to understand the specific capabilities you require to support your team. Once you have built that relationship, the world is your oyster! 

Contact us today if you wish to learn more about staff augmentation or understand how we at ELB Learning can offer you our services.