When Brandon Hall Group asked learning organizations to list the primary challenges impacting their ability to develop the skills their businesses will require in the near future (Transforming Learning and Development for the Future of Work, 2022), nearly half revealed they did not have the people, time and financial resources to support future skills development needs. Many organizations continue to struggle with the imperative to do more work with less or limited staff resources or limp along with gaps in their staff skills and expertise while navigating a rapidly evolving technology space.
Whether your learning organization is faced with a hiring freeze, too many projects to be handled by too few staff members, or specific skills gaps related to new learning technologies or modalities, an excellent option to consider is staff augmentation.
Staff augmentation is an outsourcing approach in which resources can be flexibly added on demand to meet either a short- or long-term need to supplement existing staff. This is a separate approach from the more traditional project outsourcing model, where resources are added to address a specific project only. With staff augmentation, you are expanding your staff on a temporary basis, and the added resources are fully integrated into your team or learning organization.
Staff augmentation provides several benefits:
- Cost-Effective — The typical cost of recruiting, interviewing, background checking and onboarding a staff member is bypassed.
- Agility — New resources can be added and subtracted as needed to meet the changing needs of your learning organization.
- Flexibility — Full- or part-time resources can be obtained on demand to supplement skills in short supply on your full-time staff.
- Full Integration — Augmented resources can be woven into your existing team and often bring with them knowledge and experience which helps boost innovation.
Staff augmentation provides a flexible way to work around a hiring freeze and ensure your learning function has both the skills and resources to address the learning needs of the business. It can be used to gain expertise on new or emerging learning technologies, to enable success the first time you are dipping your toes into a new learning approach, or simply to free up your full-time employees so they can be assigned to other priorities. A less obvious additional benefit is, once you no longer need the resources, you don’t have to go through the trauma of laying off a full-time employee.
Brandon Hall Group SmartChoice® Platinum Preferred Provider ELB Learning is a full-service learning provider that offers staff augmentation as well as other learning services. They have a large roster of learning experts including instructional designers, project managers, facilitators, technical writers, eLearning developers, training coordinators and other highly skilled experts, and work closely with organizations looking to temporarily address staff shortages or close specific skills gaps in the Learning function.
