Many people think that outstaffing sells people or their working hours, but in fact, companies are offered the opportunity to quickly achieve their business goals. At the same time, without unnecessary troubles with the search for specialists, their motivation and control of labor discipline.
But this is possible only when there is an understanding: what obstacles prevent the successful and long-term work of an external specialist and a customer in an outstaff model, and most importantly, what can be done to minimize them?
The developer in this film is the main character
The more popular the outstaffing format of work becomes, the more all kinds of “shoulds” fall on the shoulders of the developer.
In classic outsourcing and in-house, the responsibility for all communication lies with the project manager, and the developer can afford any level of social phobia. After all, an interested manager will find out everything, smooth the corners and worry about the team.
In outstaffing, the developer has to manage his own tasks, convey the point of view to the “client,” argue the position, and work with his objections. Yes, there should be technical specialists on the client side, not managers; otherwise outstaffing will fail, but the fact remains that the specialist communicates directly with the client side without a damping managerial layer.
Let’s not forget about the general problems of remote work. It was during the work of InHouse that colleagues could see that the developer was already close to the joyful completion of the task, or vice versa; he boiled and sat sadly. Lack of direct eye contact is a big problem that needs to be compensated for. The developer needs to correctly escalate problems, initiate dialogues, and remind himself in time.
What to do?
Inside the production, everyone should understand that an outstaffing project is the same as any other, and the format of work itself is an inevitable round of outsourcing development. To understand that it is normal for a programmer to be able to work not only under the strict supervision of their managers and team leads but also in IT outstaffing services by Peiko, communicating with a team external to the company.
A clear, communicative, predictable outstaff specialist in terms of pace and results is the ideal image that a developer should strive for.
To reduce the anxiety of the team and the customer’s team leaders, you need to teach developers to always fix tasks for the day and to voice important points in a timely manner that can shift the deadline or affect its result. Somewhere even be able to manage the expectations of the team leader, to feel the moment when you need to be reminded of yourself and the progress of the task.
It is important to convey the main idea to employees – not only hard skills determine the level of a specialist.
There is always a difficulty in learning soft skills. For our part, we recommend explaining to developers the reasons and essence:
An IT specialist grows in price if he has experience. This is not only about the quality of his code but also about a sufficient number of difficult situations in which he got into and knew how to avoid and how to behave in them. It’s just another side of professionalism.
Discrimination
Despite the fact that any team leader will tell you that he treats outstaffers and the internal team in exactly the same way, he will most likely have a more biased attitude towards external specialists. What is it connected with?
When a person works in the state, the team leader is responsible for the fact that he picked him up, what salary he is paid and what bonuses he receives. All financial and non-financial motivators of the company act on the employee. The relationship between the leader and the subordinate is regulated by the corporate organizational structure.
When a specialist works in the outstaffing model, the team leader is also responsible for success, he is still responsible for his choice, but there are significantly fewer tools to influence the employee. Corporate tools no longer work here. He will inevitably begin to compensate for this with something.
If the team leader himself has good soft skills, then he will try not to demonstrate this difference.
What to do?
So that an outstaff developer does not feel like an outsider on the project, ideally, the team leader should have uniform communication standards in the team and explain and emphasize the common goal. In the event that such skills are not enough for him, this explanatory procedure must be carried out within the outstaffer team.