Staff Augmentation in India – 6 Trends to Watch Out For in 2023

In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, with economic uncertainty prevailing on the global front, companies in India are aiming for a significant competitive advantage. This objective is achieved through outsourcing their non-core activities, especially the non-critical departments. But they still want skilled, experienced hands on board to help run the critical departments of their organizations to bring in efficiency and savings. It resulted in various trends in staff augmentation services in India.

This article will explore the top staff augmentation trends currently in vogue in India.

Staff Augmentation Outsourcing- Top 6 Trends to Rule 2023 in India

The buzz around startups and entrepreneurship in India will continue to grow despite the speculations about a possible recession in the coming years. In these growing numbers of companies, the distinction between online hiring and traditional recruiting is disappearing. The talent market has become so huge that companies use various methods to find people to work for them. These two trends are converging into something brand new. There’s no longer a single trend or technique that employers rely on. This will prompt many enterprises to incline towards IT staff augmentation outsourcing in India in 2023.

In addition, millennials will be a significant driving force behind the recruitment trends that will make IT staff augmentation mainstream in India.

Evolution of the Workforce Mindset

The current workforce in India mainly comprises millennials and GenZ workers. They are after fast money. India’s fast-growing gig economy is turning millennials’ aspirations into reality. The ASSOCHAM report states that the Indian gig economy is set to touch a value of USD455bn and will grow at 17% CAGR through 2024. 

Such workers are more inclined to take short-term projects rather than long-term commitments to an organization. This has set many recruitment changes in motion in India that will continue through 2023. These changes include staff augmentation firms relying on cutting-edge recruitment platforms.

These platforms will be driven by superior AI & ML algorithms and product design to enable hiring the right gig worker at the right time. The platform in the staff augmentation process flow will be programmed to match the hiring company with job seekers who automatically furnish their right and detailed data such as skills, relevant experience and location.

Staff augmentation outsourcing firms are expected to frame their hiring policies as per the four main segments of gig workers, which are:

• Free agents- Contractual work is their primary source of income.
• Casual workers- Consider freelancing jobs as their supplementary income.
• Reluctant workers- Take up gig employment out of compulsion.
• Cash-strapped agents- Freelancing work is their secondary source of income, but they are unwilling to invest extra time in their contractual jobs. 

The Quest for an Elastic Workforce

One of the prime reasons for mass layoffs done by corporate bigwigs like Amazon and Meta is the hiring of an excessive workforce. The hiring was done in haste to compensate for the temporary resource crunch during the pandemic outbreak.

Cut to 2022; employers require short-term or contractual employees who will contribute to their workforce elasticity. Such an elasticity will allow companies to optimize their resources whenever deemed necessary. Staff augmentation firms are expected to lean on AI-driven platforms to achieve this. Such platforms will have the ability to predict an organization’s future project scopes. Then, the platforms match the anticipated scope with an existing pool of erstwhile employees, rejected candidates or other contingent workers and enable the recruiting firm to locate the right talent for project work on a contractual basis.

These AI-based platforms remove the hard work, guesswork and time typically involved in the staff augmentation process.

This trend will find relevance in India at the beginning of 2023 as the search engine exhibits more search queries about “what is staff augmentation”.

Tapping into the Hidden Workers Pool

There are widespread speculations about a possible economic downturn in the year 2023. This is prompting organizations to steer away from their traditional salaried workforce. Such a drift will oblige staff augmentation services in India to take a reroute from the conventional process of hiring candidates.

In 2023, staff augmentation services providers in India are expected to tap into the hidden workers’ pool. This pool comprises candidates who do not fit into the traditional employment skill sets. They fail to get jobs for reasons such as health issues, employment gaps, physical disabilities, relocation issues, etc. But they have equal or more technical skills than the so-called employable candidates.

Most of these hidden workers seek remote and contractual jobs to help them meet their financial needs and overcome difficulties. Staff recruitment firms will reduce dependence on automatic search tools that include limited filters, which outrightly disqualify such hidden workers. Instead, the firms are expected to program their devices with six or more filters of basic skills that encompass traditional and non-traditional but highly qualified hidden workers.

Inclination towards Outsourcing

Despite the mass layoffs across the world, operations did not halt. Instead, companies are zeroing in on more innovative hiring and workforce management strategies to keep up with their operational continuity and save costs to keep up with the raging inflation.

This will see an uptick in outsourcing to low-cost but highly qualified workers in developed nations like India. The current economic conditions may prompt several short-term projects to crop up instead of long-term projects. It will be wise to hire a workforce on a contractual basis rather than hiring an entire team in-house.

It will be a daunting task for organizations searching for the right gig workforce and keeping up with their working terms while managing their project pipeline. This will reinforce the relevance of staff augmentation outsourcing in India in 2023. Outsourcing firms have the right tech stack and strategies up their sleeves that empower them to hire the right source for their clients at the right time in the most cost and time-efficient way.

Remote Staffing Infrastructure

Since its inception during the Covid-19 pandemic, remote working infrastructure has proved extremely cost-efficient and flexible. By 2023, most of the staff augmentation consulting services providers in India are expected to adopt tools to facilitate a remote hiring and onboarding process.

To begin with, recruiters will adopt cloud-based tools programmed to conduct interviews, assess and finally onboard a candidate remotely. It includes implementing analytics to monitor and improvise hiring strategies on-the-fly.

The staff augmentation model in India is expected to follow suit as the US Federal government announced a shift of focus from degrees to skills in 2020 while filling Federal positions. This will fuel the prominence of skills-based hiring methods for staff augmentation in India. A pre-employment skills-based assessment will be vital to this skills-based hiring method.

Updating the Tech Stack

The Indian IT staff augmentation services have exhibited incredible business resilience despite an economic slowdown. The key to this resilience was an updated tech stack. Recruiters are introducing analytics and other engagement tools in the staff augmentation models.

Data analytics help recruiters pinpoint candidates who are the best fit for specific organizations. RPA helps segregate and filter out candidates who have just updated their employment status. This is an integral part of the staff augmentation process flow that narrows the candidate search.

Conclusion

Every organization needs to make a careful choice while selecting staff augmentation consulting services providers. Whether you are seeking proficient help to handle the workload alongside you or need a helping hand to deal with a short-term project, the solution to your problem is outsourcing. There is no room for error in any business venture; getting the best provider in this market is every entrepreneur’s dream.

As a leading IT staff augmentation consulting services provider, we maintain the perfect blend of the best tech stack and human intelligence to bring you the right talent at the time you need the most. Our staff augmentation process flow is characterized by expertise across multiple industries and management capabilities. It promotes resource efficiency and process effectiveness in our operation. These benefits allow us to provide you with top-notch quality service and cost-effectiveness.