Difference between staff augmentation and workforce supplementation

There are two terms that are used in the outsourced staffing services business. Or in relation to this business. These terms are staff augmentation and workforce supplementation.

Confused? Are you thinking that they mean the same thing?

Well, don’t be confused. And no, they don’t mean the same thing.

What is staff augmentation?

Consider this situation: A project for a client at IT company A is running into a critical delivery phase. But the client revises the scope of the project and demands a few more elements be included in it. This really means that more high-quality people are required to join the project in record time. Further, these people must stay on to see the project go live. The project manager for A calls their outsourced staffing partner for help. Within a week, 20 skilled, experienced engineers join A’s project team. They have been contracted for an 18-month period. Yes, they are temporary. But they are also locked into the project till its completion.

This operation would qualify as staff augmentation.

From the outsourced staffing firm’s point of view staff augmentation is a strategic, value-added service. It involves helping clients onboard great quality talent, in record time, in critical situations. Some outsourced staffing firms call this a “bridge-to-hire” service. That is, a client company can try a talented resource for a period of time (often linked to the tenure of the project) before deciding to hire that talent on a full-time basis.

As part of a staff augmentation service, a staffing firm is not just filling positions and meeting targets related to head count. It is actively involved in working with the client in assessing a project’s requirement based on current staffing and new workload demands. The people requirement to complete project is then drawn up. And these positions are quickly filled with skilled, competent resources.

Since staff augmentation involves thinking like a business leader, staffing services refer to it as a value-added, strategic offering.

What is workforce supplementation?

Consider these scenarios:

Hotel B is having an unusually busy weekend. It requires 10 stewards in banquets, three chefs, 20 waiters and 18 housekeeping assistants. The hotel shares their requirement with their staffing partner. This partner firm arranges temp workers for all those roles for the weekend. These temp workers are not needed at the hotel beyond the two days that they were contracted for. Their roles were indeed temporary.

Retail store C needs 25 sales agents for the next five Sundays, counting down to a local festival. The store places their request with their outsourced staffing partner. Over the next five Sundays the store employs 25 sales agents who are sent over as temp workers by the staffing firm. Not all the 25 sales agents are the same people that were assigned on a previous Sunday. The temp workers keep changing. There is no contract of employment or commitment from either side. They are just temporary workers. They come and go. New ones come and too go away, to be replaced by another set the following Sunday.

This outsourced staffing service of providing temporary workers for short durations, for specific needs, is called workforce supplementation. There is not much thinking required in offering and fulfilling this service. It is a plain-vanilla service that manages the head count. Think of sales agents at stores, life guards on the beach, caddies at a golf course, traffic wardens on the roads and hospitality industry workers. These are temporary workers. Getting paid for temporary positions that they are filling.

Workforce or staff supplementation is therefore the service that supplies temporary workers to clients on a need basis.

Conclusion

Both staff augmentation and workforce supplementation are services provided by outsourced staffing firms. But that’s where the similarity ends.

Both services are poles apart.

Staff augmentation is strategic and adds value. It increases the profitability for both the client and the staffing firm.

Workforce supplementation is a service helps bridge a short-term, temporary staffing shortfall. It is a low-end service in terms of both pricing and profitability of a staffing firm.

Even so, outsourced staffing firms that offer an array of services to their clients may often want to provide both staff augmentation and workforce supplementation support. When a service provider is able to meet every possible need of their client, they are able to grow their bond and business with the client. Very often, it is meeting a workplace supplementation need that opens the door for a staffing firm with some clients. This need is almost always urgent. And arises from a crisis-like situation. When a partner bails a client out in times of a crisis, that service is never quite forgotten. Over time, an intelligent staffing firm will leverage that opportunity and bond to profit from a value-added service like staff augmentation.