The Hidden Benefits of Staff Augmentation in Healthcare

For healthcare systems, staff augmentation is an innovative, flexible, and strategic way to outsource talent. Staying ahead of digital transformation and technological advances is vital in healthcare. However, building an in-house team of experienced and skilled team members and bringing them up-to-speed with an organization’s needs can be difficult and time-consuming for both the human resource department and the team needing assistance. By working with a consulting firm that offers staff augmentation, healthcare organizations gain access to a vast team of skilled, talented, and previously screened professionals with specific healthcare industry experience.

Staff augmentation is an especially beneficial service for being a solution for short-term talent shortages or fulfilling a skill-gap on a project. Other common reasons healthcare systems may need staff augmentation can include a sudden increase in workload, the need for implementation support, or the development of a large or complex project, requiring specifically skilled and experienced staff. Whatever the reason, when working together with a staff augmentation firm, healthcare organizations will discover the specific project and skills required. Based off these needs, organizations will be presented with the right number of augmented Team members, with the specified needed skill set, and are ready to bring valuable results.

Remember, these are not ‘temps’ or ‘interns’ – these are industry professionals and experts in their field, with multiple certifications, who have made a career in augmentation. This experience and professionalism not only brings the right set of skills to projects, but allows healthcare leaders and internal staff to focus on additional strategic initiatives while knowing they have the trusted resources on the job.

What to look for when hiring a staff augmentation firm for a healthcare system:

• Experienced in staff augmentation
• Specialized and knowledgeable in the healthcare industry
• Full understanding of staffing requirements
• Additional services offerings

Top 4 Hidden Benefits of Staff Augmentation

Not only is staff augmentation helpful for finding short-term talent during shortages, or for filling a skill-gap on a project, but there are several hidden benefits as well. These hidden benefits include cost savings, flexibility and scalability, organizational growth, knowledge transfer, and reduced burnout.

1. Cost Savings Without Sacrificing Quality

Though not immediately apparent, staff augmentation is a significant opportunity for healthcare organizations to attain cost savings. Through staff augmentation, organizations can benefit from well-trained and expert professionals as needed without having to commit to a long-term, and otherwise costly, employment. When compared to expenses associated with hiring a full-time employee, organizations can reduce HR related expenses such as salary, taxes, social security, retirement benefits, and health insurance. There are also overhead expenses – like office space, hardware, and additional training – that that can be avoided as well. The cost efficiency gained through staff augmentation allows these organizations to redirect these newfound dollars to other critical areas, such as research, acquiring more advanced technologies, and patient care.

2. Increased Flexibility & Scalability

Staff augmentation also offers healthcare organizations flexibility and scalability. By bringing on staff augmented Team members, organizations become positioned to better adapt to fluctuating workloads, temporary demands, or the ramifications of unexpected surges in patient volumes. This flexibility allows organizations to continue delivering uninterrupted, quality care while maintaining sufficient staffing.

Similarly, if a healthcare organization has changing job and work requirements regularly, staff augmentation allows these teams to hire on a project-by-project basis, only hiring for when and what is needed – saving organizations time and money.  Whether it be a short-term project or long-term initiative, healthcare organizations can effortlessly expand or contract their team’s size without the complexity of internal hiring processes or unwanted layoffs.

3. Organizational Growth and Knowledge Transfer

Staff augmented Team members don’t pack-up their expertise and take it with them at a projects end – instead, they transfer their knowledge to the organization’s Team. By collaborating with staff augmented professionals on projects, internal Team members have the unique opportunity to learn new perspectives, techniques, and industry best practices from external experts. This exchange of knowledge can strengthen the skill set of existing Teams and further promote a culture of continued learning.

This external expertise can also help foster organizational growth. When helping organization’s complete projects, or fill skill-gaps, staff augmented Team members can assist these healthcare systems in becoming up-to-speed, often times even getting ahead, of industry insights and technological advancements. Organizational challenges also have the opportunity to improve through the development of new processes and increased efficiencies based off of transferred knowledge and insights.

4. Reduced Burnout

Staff augmentation doesn’t always need to be about filling a skill-gap or gaining knowledge-specific talent for a project – it can also be a method to reduce burnout within an existing Team by adding similar talent. Burnout is a prevalent concern in healthcare and greatly impacts the well-being of an organization’s Team members. During times of a known upcoming increase in workload, hiring staff augmented resources can provide relief to existing Teams which can improve job satisfaction, increase productivity, and nurture retention rates. Likewise, the HR department also has more time to focus on other strategic initiatives instead of onboarding these otherwise new Team members.