Building A Talent Pipeline For Large-Scale Initiatives

Scale Your L&D Talent

In today’s dynamic competitive landscape, L&D leaders must be able to scale their talent to keep pace with ever-changing business realities. Too often, corporate teams find themselves with too many bodies to keep busy and not enough work—or too much work but not enough people to get the job done properly. This can be a tough balance to handle, especially when large initiatives carry high stakes.

Addressing The Ebb And Flow Of Staffing Needs

With project needs continually in a state of flux, L&D leaders may worry that relying on temporary team members will decrease morale or require a significant amount of time and resources to get people up to speed. They also want to avoid costly mistakes and the risk of missing a deadline. If the initiative is large enough, there’s an additional concern about keeping stakeholders informed about progress and dealing with the potential consequences of not generating the right results.

This is where staff augmentation can be beneficial. By building an efficient and effective talent pipeline of experienced individuals—utilizing a dynamic temporary staffing model instead of relying on a permanent internal team—L&D leaders can flex their staff sizes up or down based on what’s needed now instead of next month. They can help address large-scale initiatives without putting additional pressure on already-busy teams. What’s more, partnering with the right outside staffing firm can actually result in greater cost savings and a higher-quality product than just relying on an internal team alone.

The Advantages Of A Temporary Staffing Model

While many organizations think that having an internal team will allow them to cut costs on processes like onboarding, it still presents some drawbacks. An internal team may be unable to scale up or down quickly and effectively due to the current workload or missing skillsets required to take on a new temporary role. Any gaps that exist for specific roles and responsibilities may have to be taken on internally by someone who is already stretched for time.

By leveraging a temporary staffing model and partnering with an outside agency that specializes in staff augmentation, organizations can add or remove team members as project needs evolve. For large-scale initiatives, it’s possible to cut costs by reducing the team size during times of low work volume, then increase it again as the work ramps back up. Professional staffing partners have processes in place to pair experts with the right opportunities, and it can take less time than expected to get these flex team members up to speed with brand culture and project initiatives. Temporary staff can be chosen based on their expertise related to the roles and responsibilities needed, which doesn’t require any additional training.

Temporary L&D staffing has proven to be an effective option for organizations with limited budgets. It allows access to specific expertise only during peak periods, sparing companies the additional expense of making additional employees full-fledged team members. It’s also an excellent solution for organizations that may be suffering from a creative roadblock that inhibits innovation. By working with a specialized staffing agency, L&D leaders can partner with experts who can bring new ideas and energy to the team environment. These experts can also help train internal teams on emerging technologies, as well as provide expert consulting advice that simplifies the L&D process. It’s a partnership centered on shared success that paves the way for sustainable growth and results.

Emerging Technology Demands New Skills

The need to incorporate AI, Virtual Reality, adaptive learning platforms, and other emerging technologies into a particular corporate training initiative can present a staffing challenge if expertise in those technologies doesn’t reside within the organization. Which begs the question: Why should a company expect its employees to become experts in these fields when it can temporarily collaborate with specialists who have cutting-edge technological knowledge and experience? These professionals can not only introduce these new technologies into a business but also train a permanent workforce to leverage them properly.

A temporary L&D team is much better equipped to help an organization quickly respond to technological advancements, stay competitive, and provide internal teams with the valuable and targeted training needed to complete large-scale initiatives in alignment with business goals.

Key Considerations In Hiring A Temporary Staffing Agency

Here are some questions L&D leaders can ask themselves to begin building a staffing pipeline and working with a staff augmentation partner for a large-scale initiative:

• What does success look like for this upcoming initiative? What results or outcomes do stakeholders want to see?
• What makes this initiative such a large undertaking?
• Who’s involved? What do they need to prove?
• Which roles and responsibilities will best help support the initiative?
• What skill gaps currently exist, or where would current team members have to train to step into those roles or responsibilities effectively?
• How can a flex team member fill those gaps effectively?
• What questions can I ask potential staffing partners to get the most of my investment?
• What concerns do I have about working with an external partner?
• Which potential partners or talent do I want to reach out to?

What To Look For In A Staffing Partner

The following criteria are critical to making the right choice:

• L&D expertise. A true staffing partner understands the needs of a client’s L&D team along with the needs of their learners and their overall organization. Any experts who augment the team must have firsthand experience and know how to focus on the outcomes the organization is looking for.
• Depth and breadth of talent. To ensure the right experts are placed on the right teams, a true staffing partner should have a robust, on-demand talent network of diverse individuals who can fill any skill gap well.
• Ongoing support. A staff partner has the resources in place to provide support even after a project launch. They should be committed to the long-term success of any initiative they undertake.
• Cost-effectiveness. Selecting the right work isn’t as simple as comparing hourly rates. Every person works differently, and it’s important to trust that your staffing partner understands how the people within their network work best. Flex team member performance should meet expectations beyond simply checking the box for a certain role or responsibility within the team.

AllenComm has partnered with several clients on L&D staff augmentation to define expectations and match their needs in multiple areas, which has provided valuable insight into what makes a productive, mutually successful partnership.

For example, a client had one of their biggest undertakings yet coming up: a full organizational restructure with new teams, new systems, and new ways of working—but not enough L&D professionals to design new training that would decrease time to proficiency and rapidly improve performance. This client needed a way to augment and scale their staffing approach to meet these demands and then save costs by reducing team sizes as needed once the initial heavy-lifting stages of the project were completed. The strategies employed focused on addressing volume—the need for many hands—rather than purely expertise or cultural fit.

Another client, however, needed only a few experienced individuals for a limited-time commitment of six months or less. This organization’s situation required each individual to be highly specialized with specific certifications, but because of the timeline, full-time employees weren’t an option. By augmenting their team with the experts they needed, they were able to complete the project earlier than expected and even decided to continue using augmentation strategies for future initiatives.

Because each organization’s needs and goals are unique, it’s important to ensure a seamless and enjoyable experience that goes beyond simply getting the work done. Every team member is an individual with their own strengths and values, so candidates must be placed in teams where they can integrate well with and actively contribute to generating positive results for each large-scale project.

The Key Is Flexibility

In today’s business environment, with competitive challenges and customer demands, the ability to respond quickly to staffing needs is essential. A specialized L&D staffing pipeline, when built right, is a smart approach to addressing large-scale initiatives without putting additional pressure on already busy teams. It provides flexibility and agility—a cost-effective way to tailor staffing up or down as workloads change, empowering L&D leaders to tackle any challenge cost-effectively.