59% of businesses seek talent outside their structure to cut costs. For them, the first step to a perfect tech professional is choosing between outstaffing and outsourcing. Unlike outsourcing, outstaffing might be difficult to understand.

What comes after the hiring and how much responsibility does an outstaffing business assume when opting for it? What are the exact steps of setting up an outstaffed team post-hiring?

Providing the team with equipment

To be effective, developers need both hard- and software tools. Laptops, desktop computers, additional screens, professional keyboards, testing devices, and so on are obvious. Software is more obscure, as different developers need different programs, licenses, and tools.

There is no unified formula for companies that provide technical staffing services to equip a tech specialist. They can opt for one out of the following plans:

1. Full remote — a tech professional uses their own equipment and licenses. In this case, the client is responsible for providing them with everything they need.
2. In-office — outstaffing company takes care of the equipment.
3. Flexible — the client and the outstaffing company agree upon their own terms when it comes to providing the tech specialists with equipment.

Choosing the right approach to the team’s equipment will guarantee they do everything on time and are at their most effective.

Management

Only 21% of companies have waterfall or agile management in place. Bad management decisions, like not tracking the project’s run, or not controlling the developers’ progress and productivity, results in $110 million losses per every billion invested in the project.

A project’s management and tracking is a sole responsibility of the client company. An outstaffed developer or UI/UX specialist will be fully adhering to the policies and management decisions of the client company, which makes them a rightful part of the team.

Monitoring deadlines and results

There are several reasons for the tech professionals to miss deadlines or produce poor results:

• Unclear specifications
• Wrong estimations
• Changing requirements

With the management of tech teams not falling under the umbrella of the outstaffing team’s responsibilities, the deadlines, abidance by them, and the team's results are also the direct responsibility of a client business. IT staffing services providers do not manage your tech team's deadlines, but can do anything you need for your team to complete their tasks on time.

Team’s wellbeing

Working on the outstaffing partner’s premises, the wellbeing of the tech professionals is controlled and monitored by the outstaffing company:

• The feeling of the challenge
• Burnout
• Comfortable working conditions
• Personal and professional development and so on

As an outstaffing company, we are also conducting regular people experience talks that include regular feedback and check-in talks. They allow us to track the well-being of the tech teams and signal our clients when their behavior or moods change.

We also always ask the tech professionals about their interests and plans for their professional development. This allows us to inform our clients about the courses or books the tech professionals need to feel fulfilled.

By preventing burnouts, implementing retention-oriented people experience talks, and taking care of the team and their benefits, we have decreased professional turnover from 8.7% in 2019 to 4.8% in 2021. This helps us save resources on hiring and training.

Team’s legal and financial questions

Outstaffing companies take care of all legal and financial questions and issues the tech professionals may come across. This happens for two reasons:

1. The client and the outstaffing team often work from different countries, so the client might simply not know the landscape of legal and financial systems the tech teams have to deal with.
2. This gives the client the possibility to fully focus on their product and not have to worry about the team’s documentation and compensation.

Outstaffing is a great way to free the resources and give the project undivided attention.

Setting up team communication

Even a world away, an outstaffed professional is still a full-blown part of the client’s team. They adhere to the rules, the deadlines, and are fully controlled by the client. Which means setting up an efficient communication flow and making sure the team works like a well-oiled mechanism is in full the client’s responsibility.

An outstaffing partner can watch a professional’s moods and make sure they are not burnt out, which would increase the effectiveness of the communication and decrease the level of burnout.

A lot of post-outstaffing processes fall on the client’s shoulders. This allows them to control the tech specialists’ work and be responsible for its results. Full understanding of what comes after hiring can help businesses make the right choice between outsourcing and outstaffing and get the right results.

by Anna Shevtsova
on May 24, 2022. Share on LinkedIn Post on Twitter

Anna has 6-years overall experience in writing. She previously observed financial markets, conducting the daily research on the state of bonds and stocks. She is a keen reader with interest in historical literature and international cuisine. Her latest obsession — approaches to creating family-like teams in remote times.