Staff augmentation involves outsourcing additional staff or skills to quickly resource a project. It leverages existing resources while bringing in outside expertise. Organizations should evaluate their staffing needs, project deadlines and budgets before pursuing staff augmentation. Staff augmentation providers can supply full-time resources to work exclusively on a client's projects, helping to improve services, expertise and manage staff retention issues while freeing up a client's resources and budgets.

1. Staff augmentation – The right strategy to turn on a project
Staff augmentation is an outsourcing strategy that is used to quickly staff a project, add
missing skills, and bring better efficiency and effectiveness in a work group. The main
advantage of staff augmentation is that it helps in leveraging the existing resources as well
as bringing in outsourced services. There are certain key factors that need to be considered
for an organization to determine whether it needs to augment, its staffing needs and the
three important key factors that need to be considered in this regard are:
1. Staff evaluation: An organization before going in for staff augmentation must
investigate whether there are any missing key skills and therefore need outside
expertise. Where, the staff is quite competent but their competencies are not being
fully utilized.
2.Evaluating the present needs:The organization mustconsider staff augmentation if the
project comes with a tight deadline or where the organization is in distress due to
operational handicap that is dragging its business momentum.
3. Budget evaluation:Before seeking for staff augmentation, the business entity must
have proper evaluation of its budget to manage the increased headcount of employees
or staff. It must be ablecope up with the capital expenditure due to staff augmentation
procedures.
There are number of agencies that are providing staff augmentation services. Each of them
isspecialized in staff augmentation for different sectors that include information
technology, manufacturing, capital goods, mining, hospitality, health and other areas. The
main objective of staff augmentation firms is to help organizations to provide employees
that work exclusively ontheir projects like full time employees from the premises of the
service provider. The advantages for companies due to staff augmentation include:
---Getting a team of developers or programmers under one roof in case of IT related
projects for an organization engaged in the business of Information Technology.
---Helps in improving the overall service levels and areas of expertise concerned with the
client organizations’ business.
---Staff retention worries are taken care of by the staff augmentation service providers.
---In cased of large process plants staff augmentation can introduce ideas and technologies
from outside the plant walls.
Therefore, it can be said that staff augmentation is the best strategy not only for startup
companies who require technical staff but also for those already established companies who
are looking to delegate their workload and would like to complete their projects on time.