Boosting Tech Teams with External Staff: a future bet for companies

As any good business leader knows, a robust and effective technological infrastructure is essential in today’s modern world. Technology doesn’t just offer convenience and efficiency, it is also a necessary factor in company culture, internal and external relationships, and information and data security.

However, the fact remains that the availability and recruitment of IT professionals are limited, with talent in high demand by companies. Consequently, more businesses are moving towards the new trend of investing in the staff augmentation model.

According to new research from Virgin Media O2 Business and Censuswide, 55% of employees say that their organisation suffers from a digital skills shortage. If you’re wondering about the impact this may have on businesses; you’re not alone. A massive 83% of surveyed professionals are worried about the effects, especially during an economic downturn. The research highlights the critical need for companies to address the problems caused by the digital divide with new, more effective HR strategies.

As a result of the shortage of qualified experts and the uncertainty caused by the global recession, international organisations are using external recruitment and staff augmentation to find highly skilled employee profiles. In fact, according to a study by SpendEdge, team augmentation is expected to have an incremental spend of around $81.87 billion, growing by 3.53% over the next five years.

Staff augmentation - an outsourcing model

Many people may instantly think there is a connection between staff augmentation and outsourcing; however, they aren’t quite the same. Staff or team augmentation can be considered a type of outsourcing model that is relatively newer and a more direct form of recruitment. Its primary focus involves introducing individual skilled professionals into the company in a context where digital talent is lacking.

Although these experts are not part of the company's workforce, they contribute to its overall objectives and are considered part of the team. For this reason, more international companies will likely be adopting this recruitment strategy to solve the challenges we’re facing today.

The benefits of this approach are multiple, and the main advantage is that it enables the acquisition of highly qualified talent to meet short and long-term business objectives. It also allows for optimising budget and time. This strategy ensures that staff with the proper credentials and skillset are always adequately organised, allowing customers to receive skilled, relevant, and fast support.

An adequate IT infrastructure doesn’t just benefit customers, internal operations and support services are also critical to the success of a business. The research cited suggests that of the organisations that introduced new technologies during the Covid-19 lockdowns, on average, half are planning to revert to pre-pandemic practices. This move is critical because 50% of employees say that rolling back these technological advances would make them more likely to resign. If there was ever a vital warning sign that the reversal of the UK’s digital transformation would fuel the flames of the tech skills crisis, then this is it. 

This year, the UK tech industry hit the significant milestone of reaching a valuation of £1 trillion - the most of any European nation. If the UK is to hold that valuation, utilising HR practices such as staff augmentation could be a company’s life raft during an economic storm.