When Is Talent Outsourcing More Efficient and Cost-Effective Than Hiring In-House

When Is Talent Outsourcing More Efficient and Cost-Effective Than Hiring In-House?

The current labor shortage is no secret, and companies across all industries are struggling to stay at full employment. One area where this problem is especially severe is maintenance and reliability (M&R). Unlike other professions, where training isn’t overly complex or lengthy, this work requires highly skilled M&R engineers for most tasks.

In industries such as manufacturing, where maintenance is essential to continuous operations and safety, the shortage is especially prevalent. A study¹ by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute found that the manufacturing skills gap in the U.S. could result in 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030. The cost of those missing jobs to facilities — and therefore to those who purchase the products they manufacture — could total $1 trillion yearly at that time.

The manufacturers surveyed also reported that finding the right talent is now 36%² harder than it was in 2018. Similar shortages in other industries are forcing corporate leaders to pursue new solutions. One of these is talent outsourcing for trained M&R workers.

Facilities Management is an industry that isn’t going anywhere, and neither are M&R professionals.

Exacerbating the problem, many organizations don’t have the resources to attract the right people. The result is that higher skill-level workers end up handling routine operational tasks, such as working with technicians to troubleshoot where a machine broke down. The facility ends up using an $80 per-hour person to solve a $20 per-hour problem.

All of these factors led I-care to start a talent augmentation offering. Based on my experience working as Talent Director for I-care Talent, an offering like this confers numerous benefits for organizations in all industries, even if they aren’t struggling to find good talent. With a qualified “talent augmentation partner” on board, personnel directors can focus on the many important tasks that fill their days. They also enjoy the reassurance that all the professionals who come to them have been fully vetted and proven their worth.

What to Look for in a Talent Augmentation Offering

Following are my thoughts on what a company should seek when evaluating talent augmentation resources. Consider them my list of “best practices.”

1. The firm takes time to evaluate all aspects of your needs and match them with workers who fit the classification and price range.
2. They offer talent at multiple skill and experience levels, such as junior, intermediate/medior and senior.
3. Unless they are willing to bear the added expense, the firm will never send a senior worker to do a junior’s job just because they don’t have a junior worker available at the time.
4. If a company requests a senior-level worker, they will also have the capability and willingness to train the firm’s lower-level workers, such as Junior Engineers that do fieldwork.
5. Last, but certainly not least, they are involved with the firm’s projects, budgets and anticipated results. Any senior worker they assign to a project should be capable of doing project management.

As a final requirement — one so important that I did not want to put it on the “talent best practices” list, the company should have significant experience in predictive maintenance and reliability.

1 https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/manufacturing/manufacturing-industry-diversity.html

2 Ibid