I’m excited to be able to bring this information to you at a time that I’m sure is quite challenging. Everyone is feeling the impact

of shifting towards a hybrid workplace during a time when it’s increasingly difficult to fill key roles. Across the entire business

ecosystem, hiring is proving to be a difficult thing, while at the same time, many are seeing employees flee. This shift in mindset

and employee satisfaction is happening for many reasons, but chiefly, the onus is on businesses to step up their game and win

back the affection of potential employees by enacting strong cultural changes within their organizations.

In the meantime (and at this present time in history), we’re living in a buyers’ market when it comes to sourcing permanent

employees. The COVID revolution has yielded stronger feelings in workers to demand more opportunities and choices for their

workplace. Some are preferring to remain working remotely, while others yearn for a return to the physical office. Currently,

many organizations are adopting a temporary hybrid model as a stop-gap measure, with an eye towards making it permanent.

However, this is proving to be increasingly difficult to manage employees’ time between home and office while also balancing

productivity with job satisfaction.

Learning and development professionals are having an even more difficult time finding talent in the current job market.

L&D jobs aren’t as easily filled as some other areas, like information technology or operations. L&D talent requirements have

seen a boon in the past decade and there are many skills that not every job applicant possesses. More emphasis is being placed

on finding instructional designers with extensive experience in a diverse range of skills, such as graphic design and

development skills. This is only thinning the herd and reducing the number of qualified candidates that can be considered for

open positions.

Organizations are developing a few solutions to create stop-gap measures against the impending talent shortages. Hiring

freezes ensure that budgets stay healthy, but they don’t enable L&D to pursue permanent workers. Here’s what we’re seeing as

organizations try to solve the talent crisis on the horizon. There are benefits and challenges for each:

• Offer more favorable opportunities to incoming permanent hires. Assuming there’s no freeze on hiring, companies are

being forced to take an employee-centered approach to talent building. This means offering more perks, higher salaries,

extended benefits, highly flexible working practices, and much more. The end result, however, may be a ballooning budget

required for sourcing, vetting, onboarding, and training new employees. Not to mention the massive amount of time

required to fill roles and get their teams up and running.

Your Friendly Guide to L&D Staff AugmentationBuilding Resiliency Into Your L&D Team for 2022

Introduction

• Upskill existing employees to fill skills and talent gaps. This makes a great deal of sense since upskilling reduces the

need to hire new employees, while also focusing on supporting employees in their personal and professional growth.

However, organizations still need to provide the resources for upskilling initiatives and still the question remains—are their

employees still satisfied with the company culture and conditions of a hybrid workplace? If a company is unsure about its

culture, there’s a huge risk of attrition because as was said before: it’s a buyers’ market, so sellers beware.

• Lean on agile talent to fill gaps temporarily. Hiring temporary talent keeps budgets in check while also allowing

organizations to swap out talent as their needs change. This allows businesses to practice an agile and lean approach. More

importantly, agile talent is perfectly suited for L&D requirements since many projects are agile by nature. You don’t need a

graphic designer on staff 24/7. Instead, L&D can staff by project or skill requirement to increase the capabilities of their

internal team, or even outsource to an entire team to fulfill a project on demand.

In this guide, I want to explore the third option in more detail, since staff augmentation is a topic of high demand at the

moment. I hear about the struggles of many L&D leaders on a consistent basis and work to help alleviate that stress with staff

augmentation solutions.

Many organizations come to me with similar questions and challenges when trying to decide how to approach staff

augmentation or managed services for their L&D requirements. So it makes sense that I try to assemble all the challenges and

questions into a friendly guide to help you navigate the changes that are on the horizon.

The biggest challenge for L&D appears to be finding highly specialized talent. Many hiring managers find it difficult to source,

vet, and onboard L&D talent because of the unique skills that are required to fill a position quickly. This can lead to extremely

long hiring cycles and leave learning programs in a precarious state.

It’s my hope that this guide helps you navigate these unchartered waters. But of course, I’m always available to answer any

questions you may have.

I look forward to talking with you,

Erica Franzen

VP of Talent Solutions and Operations

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Dealing With the Current Talent Crisis

The fallout of COVID is still being felt across many industries and workforces. Employees that have discovered the world of

remote work are not as readily jumping back into traditional in-person, office positions. Company culture has been put under a

microscope. After all, why work in a toxic work environment when remote work is readily available? As organizations struggle to

build a hybrid workforce, many simply aren’t good enough at it. And the talent is watching and weighing the options,

which has led to a talent shortage and a buyers market. Ask yourself if your organization is able to attract top talent with a

healthy culture, comprehensive hybrid workforce strategy, and leaders who are skilled at enabling a company-wide cultural

transformation?

Uncertainty is driving many L&D professionals away from permanent positions, or at least, they’re looking for higher salaries,

better working conditions, flexibility, and more. They’re not eagerly rushing for the first offer they receive—they’re being

extremely picky. Suddenly that unicorn hire isn’t as easily attracted to a permanent position and you’re faced with a lingering

unfilled position as projects begin to pile up.

To add to the challenge, many furloughed L&D professionals that were let go during the COVID era turned to freelance work and

contract positions when permanent positions were unavailable. They can be extremely hard to bring back to the office. Frankly,

you’d better have some pretty damn good coffee to get some people to consider returning to in-person work.

Why is Finding Top L&D Talent Such a Challenge?

Finding learning talent is another kettle of fish, as we all know. L&D roles aren’t as easy to fill as other job roles in a company. For

many L&D professionals, it’s a challenge to find the right fit for the team, the right candidate with verified credentials. These

amazing unicorn hires are definitely out there, but finding them quickly is the real challenge of L&D leaders.

We need only look at the growing need for skilled instructional designers to understand the complexities involved in sourcing,

vetting, and hiring qualified candidates. Many organizations are seeking IDs with a specific background and speciality in some

very unique areas, such as:

Needs analysis Learning objectives Course outlines Storyboards

And the qualifications don’t stop there. Many organizations are on the hunt for an “all-in-one” Instructional Designer—a multi-

skilled individual who can not only develop learning programs, but also help to execute programs, administer the LMS, monitor

metrics, perform graphic design tasks, and create content using authoring tools such as Articulate 360, Rise, Captivate, and

Lectora.

It’s quite a tall order (and role) to fill, let alone fill it quickly.

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Ask yourself what you’re looking for right now. What are the top qualifications you need to have for an instructional designer?

Who do you have in mind to administer learning programs through the LMS? What are your unique requirements and talent

gaps that keep you up at night?

Dealing With Hiring Freezes

Even before COVID came along to disrupt the workplace, many organizations were facing salary caps and hiring freezes on

permanent positions. L&D professionals turned to staff augmentation services to fill roles at a time when the option to hire

permanent employees didn’t exist. Those organizations that embraced staff augmentation discovered the economic benefits

of hiring contractors versus permanent employees. In a post-COVID recovery period where permanent employees are at a

premium, many of these benefits are driving the interest back to staff augmentation.

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The need to hire quality talent is at an all-time high. However, executive leadership surveys suggest that the talent pool is

becoming more and more drained with 51% of executive respondents saying that “not enough people with the right skill set.”

This may be due to the fact that many workers have switched jobs and perhaps even industries to remain in a work situation that

they prefer. With this talent shortage comes the need to restart hiring programs, potentially re-train or upskill existing employees

to fill the need. However, as September rolls around, the timeline to fill key positions may put organizations at risk of

underperformance and reduce growth potential.

Outsourcing L&D talent may be the most viable solution for dealing with the current shortage our industry is facing. While you

may have only considered outsourcing as a means of squeezing more out of your end-of-year budget, staff augmentation can be

considered a kind of panacea for the various ills your team is facing.

Working with a staff augmentation vendor that is specialized in top L&D talent, your organization can quickly fill individual

positions or even entire teams. Because staff augmentation services are extremely flexible, you can reduce uncertainty of team

composition by having access to a pool of L&D talent that accurately aligns to your immediate or long-term requirements. Using

a flexible resourcing model allows you to avoid the negative business impact of the demand roller coaster by smoothing your

staffing model.

Working with a proven staff augmentation vendor, you’ll be assured that candidates are fully sourced, vetted (background &

reference verification) and ready to join your team. Staff augmentation services can fill the top most requested job roles, such as:

Top Reasons for Outsourcing

Instructional Design Technical Writers LMS Administrators Facilitators/Trainers

The Pillars of Staff Augmentation

In the time before COVID, many learning and development professionals leveraged staff augmentation services to address

short-term resource gaps, team capabilities, budgetary constraints, and hiring limits. Staff augmentation was seen as a critical

strategy to augment existing teams to speed up delivery of programs, create greater flexibility in workforces, and support agility

within the organization.

Your business can evolve more quickly and manage change more effectively when working with an agile talent workforce. The

main pillars of a staff augmentation strategy that support business goals can be summed up here:

FOCUS ON CORE

CONSERVE CAPITAL

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FOSTER INNOVATION

INCREASE SPEED TO MARKET

REDUCE COSTS

IMPROVE QUALITY

Continuity in the New Normal

If anything is certain in these uncertain times, it’s that training simply can’t stop. Many companies are seeing an increase in

hiring of new employees, managers, executives, as well as developing talent to progress to higher positions in the organization.

With the influx of new hires and upskilling of existing employees means that your training needs are becoming more important

than ever. With the uncertainty around the return to work, organizations can leverage agile talent to maintain continuity of

operations and remain focused on innovation and growth.

A growing trend is the decision to move companies to a 100% virtual office environment. Many are tantalized by the cost savings.

Rent, utilities, parking, insurance, networking infrastructure, paid lunches, furniture, etc. will all be things of the past. It’s a bold

move, but at least 30 of the top companies are embracing it. Along with a new mindset, however, comes new skills required to

successfully achieve a digital transformation of this scale.

Everyone, from top leaders to managers and their teams will require training specifically designed to enable them to succeed. If

this is the case for you, then you’re in for the monumental challenge of transitioning existing programs from in-person to virtual.

In some cases, you’ll need to build programs from the ground up with a deep understanding of eLearning tools, LMS

management, authoring tools, and instructional design expertise.

In other words, you’re in for a world of training pain coming your way—that’s your new normal, and it isn’t pretty. This is why

there is so much interest in hiring strategically, whether that be an individual or an entire team. L&D leaders are discovering how

agile talent can quickly help them build new programs for leadership development, sales training, and career development, to

name a few. If rapid delivery is what you’re after, then agile talent is your friend.

Financial Impact of Agile Talent

As previously discussed in the section on dealing with hiring freezes, it’s important to note the financial benefits of hiring agile

talent. The average cost-per-hire of permanent employees is around $4,129 according to SHRM. This could include the hours of

training required to bring new hires up to speed on L&D team activities and strategies, and onboarding new talent to align with

company values and culture.

When one of your key employees decides to leave the company, you’re stuck in a bind with not only finding (and paying

for) someone to replace them, but you’re also left with a precarious knowledge gap that occurs when someone takes their

expertise and work history with them. Building relationships with agile talent allows you to access freelancers who are experts in

precisely the unique skills required for particular tasks. This makes it far easier to build resiliency into your organization since

new hires are only a phone call away.

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Your talent management partner is a key stakeholder who can help you fill talent gaps quickly while also getting the most bang

for your buck. And because they can take care of onboarding and integration of new team members, while also managing

payroll and employee costs, you can be sure that your talent solution will reduce your bottom line. Payroll costs such as

paid vacation days, maternity leave, medical and dental benefits, health and fitness incentive programs, corporate bonus

programs—the list goes on.

So what if you could pick up the phone and fill a position within hours or days of the need? Consider the savings in lost time in

getting critical learning programs off the shelf and out the door? Also consider the grey hairs you won’t be pulling out of your

head in frustration as you field calls, questions, and requests from your business.

Many organizations are taking advantage of the new push towards remote work due to the growing interest of workers during

the pandemic.

Hiring remote workers (in and of itself) provides certain benefits that can reduce the overall cost of hiring. Whether you’re

moving to a virtual office or taking a hybrid approach, agile talent that can operate effectively and productively while working

remotely can reduce many of the expenses associated with bringing in new hires into an office setting. At the same time, you

need to be sure that temporary talent has the training to work remotely and productively. This is where your vendor becomes a

learning partner for your team and your organization. Together you can determine precisely what you need and for how long you

need it.

The Benefits to Learning and Development

As you break down the overall benefits of staff augmentation for the overall business, a more detailed outlook presents itself for

L&D professionals. L&D is challenged to develop high-impact learning programs quickly and efficiently. To support rapid delivery

of projects, you may need to enhance team capabilities and find specific talent to get the job done on time.

Let’s look at the four main areas where agile talent can support your L&D team and learning goals.

• Increased Agility. Occasionally, L&D is tasked with providing new learning programs and specific L&D skills are required to

fulfill immediate needs and meet tight deadlines and drive rapid development initiatives. For example, when a company

needs to deploy a new business strategy, or pivot their offerings to offer a new product or service. Sales professionals may be

required to learn about new product specifications and new sales tactics to perform their jobs effectively. When rapid delivery

is a mandate, L&D can lean on staff augmentation to fill on-demand skills gaps

• Increased Flexibility. If L&D hires a full-time, permanent learning professional, they are locked into a long-term contract.

Once a short-term project is fulfilled, they can’t simply remove the new hire. This leads to wasted expenses in having to keep

employees around that may not have the skills to work in other areas of the L&D team. For example, an instructional designer

brought in to build an effective leadership development program may not have the expertise to work cross functionally and

deliver on a program for technical training to an IT professional. A staff augmentation candidate can be hired for specific

programs or skills but for only the duration of the need. Once the project expires, so does the contract. However, in many

cases, the consultant may have cross functional capabilities and easily be shifted to new projects.

• Reduced Time-to-fill. If the average time to fill a position is 42 days (and that’s being generous when it comes to specific skill

requirements), then speed is a factor to consider when hiring a permanent employee. Rapid delivery using a lean

methodology will benefit from the speed with which you can plug in a highly specialized team member, or even an entire

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team. Your staff augmentation vendor should have a deep pool of highly qualified talent who can be inserted and removed

as your project requirements change.

• Ability to Source Specialized Talent. As many businesses struggle to create engaging learning and training programs, L&D

is tasked with devoting significant time and resources to developing in-depth and high impact content. Traditional,

transactional training methodologies are now being enhanced using new and innovative learning tactics. However, not all

L&D teams have the capabilities to fulfill these requirements. This is where staff augmentation or managed services come

into play. When you plug in top talent with specialized skills, you can elevate your learning programs to take advantage of

new learning modalities and technologies while ensuring your programs are perfectly aligned with your learning and

business needs.

The added value of outside talent

You may not think of it at first, but bringing in outside talent opens your team up to an incredibly talented and skilled

professional who can add diversity and bake innovation into your team. Freelancers tend to have a broad set of experiences

from numerous industries. They can be valuable resources to coach your team and supply them with seasoned advice,

guidance, and best practices to actually improve your team’s capabilities, performance, and even morale.

Has your team struggled to “think outside the box” or to see a problem from a different perspective? Or maybe they’ve simply

gotten staid in their approach and not bringing energy to new projects. Your new freelancer may be just the breath of fresh air

your team needs to energize them back into productivity.

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Many staff augmentation vendors are out there to help you fill any type of role a business may require. From IT professionals to

executive assistants and everything in between. But as you are well aware, filling L&D roles is a bit more complicated than

simply looking at a resume and pulling out key competencies. It’s imperative that you find talent that truly understands the

evolving needs of L&D in our current climate and can bring insight and innovation to your team.

When you work with a learning company that is dedicated and passionate about the complexities inherent in the L&D industry,

you can be confident that the talent your source is the right talent for your needs.

The right vendor will help you with:

• Access to L&D experts aligned to your company culture

• A deep understanding of your business strategy and needs

• Custom content and other services as required

The great thing about working with a great learning partner is that if your needs change, they’ll be able to follow your lead. Let’s

say you’ve hired a stellar instructional designer to help you convert ILT to vILT. Suddenly it becomes evident that the most

effective learning solution would be to develop custom, eLearning content inhouse and distribute it through your LMS to your

learners’ mobile devices. In this scenario, a full-service learning partner will be able to provide you with skilled experts to help you

every step of the way. From custom content, LMS management, and delivery through various modalities, your learning partner

will provide you with the temporary talent you need to get the job done quickly and exactly as your L&D strategy and business

demands. It’s really that simple.

Think of your vendor as a magical tool chest that can produce the right tool for your needs, at the right time. Not only that, it can

suggest a tool you might not even have considered. Not only that, it can return everything to its original location and save you

budgetary expenses in the process! This is because you only pay for how long you need the service.

Your Staff Augmentation Vendor Buyers’ Guide

What to look for in a vendor

An outstanding staff augmentation vendor will have certain characteristics to be aware of. Here’s what you should be looking

for and why it’s important.

DEDICATED TRAINING STAFF POOL WITH FULLY VERIFIED L&D TALENT

If you want a quick turnaround on filling a position, you’re going to need a rolodex at the ready—OR—you can discuss your

immediate needs with your vendor and get a shortlist of high-caliber candidates almost immediately. This means that no

matter the trait or skill you need, you’ll be confident knowing that every applicant you review will have the qualifications,

experience, and expertise to solve your talent gap issue.

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DIVERSE TALENT TO MATCH YOUR DESIRED TRAITS WITH THE RIGHT STAFF

Just because a vendor has a lot of candidates in their database doesn’t mean that all your required skills are available. This is

what makes finding L&D talent more of a challenge than other departments: highly specialized skill requirements. Again, this is

where the magic tool box of a great vendor becomes handy. No matter the unique requirement or specific capability, your

vendor should be able to find the talent to fit.

FLEXIBILITY TO ADAPT TO YOUR UNIQUE REQUIREMENTS, SCHEDULES, AND SPECIFICATIONS

Timelines can change, objectives may shift, requirements may get updated by your business leaders. Being able to respond to

their changing demands requires a learning partner who can change along with you. And not only that, be able to counsel you

and your team with potential strategies and learning solutions that you might not have considered.

ABILITY TO ADAPT TO CHANGES QUICKLY AND PROVIDE AGILITY IN SERVICE

Being agile means being able to pivot quickly to realign priorities when required. Your vendor should be able to meet your

changing requirements as quickly as you can change your strategy (or your mind). If you find something isn’t working, or want to

experiment with a potential learning solution, you should have the support of a vendor who can match you step for step.

INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR COMPANY CULTURE TO ENSURE QUICK ALIGNMENT OF NEW HIRES

When you bring in temporary employees, you need them to hit the ground running quickly and get up to speed on both your

team dynamic and your company culture. Your vendor should support you with talent that’s already been onboarded and

trained in your company values and mission. This way they can easily integrate into your team to get started on the fun part:

making great learning experiences.

SPEAKS THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS TO HELP YOU TALK TO YOUR LEADERS

Your staff aug vendor should operate like a learning partner to you and your organization. They should be able to work with you

to develop learning strategies that align with your company goals and address business needs. Your vendor should support you

with helping to define measurement metrics to help connect the dots between training and improved performance.

CAN BRING INNOVATIVE NEW LEARNING TOOLS AND TRENDS

Sometimes, it’s not simply about the quality of talent, but what your vendor can help you discover. Innovative tools like

microlearning, gamification, mobile and video learning, virtual reality, and augmented reality, are all examples of learning

technologies that may be worth exploring. A great vendor will help you connect technologies with your learning outcomes and

support you in taking on experimental initiatives.

MULTI-SKILLED TALENT WITH CROSS-FUNCTIONAL CAPABILITIES

You may require the option to hire a temporary employee who possesses various key skills to get a job done. For example, a

skilled instructional designer who can also work as a graphic designer, and even serve as LMS administrator to manage the

learning program. When working with your vendor, define your desires, as well as your requirements, so they can support you.

FREELANCERS TO BRING DIVERSITY

There’s great value in having freelancers on your side as they can bring experience from your or other industries. Find a vendor

who can supply freelancers that can provide a fresh perspective from a diversity of professional and personal experiences. This is

one of the keys to nurturing innovation within an L&D team and you should talk with your vendor about the diversity of their

talent.

A STRONG AND VIABLE COMPANY

It should go without saying that you should be wary of any staff augmentation vendor that shows up out of nowhere. Be sure

that prospective vendors can demonstrate a long history of successful placements with top, global companies. As well, seek out

vendors who have a track record of quality customer service and quick response times. You don’t need to be abandoned once

the placement is complete. Rather, your vendor can be a consistent consultant to help you develop and maintain your learning

strategy.

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Quick Case Study

What helpful guide would be complete without a use case to demonstrate the success of working with an L&D staff

augmentation company? We luckily have a great success story to share with you, aong many. One of CoreAxis’ major client-

partners is a US-based telecommunications and mass media company that delivers media products and services to its

enterprise customers. They were undergoing a massive cultural shift to deal with a high turnover rate. In the meantime, they

sought out a temporary talent solution to fill key L&D positions with some fairly unique constraints and requirements. And of

course, they needed roles filled yesterday.

The L&D Challenge

Finding the Right Candidates

Increased Time-to-fill

Finding the Right Partner

Their internal recruiting team was having a particular challenge. They discovered that they needed a deeper understanding of

how to properly recruit, source, and vet for learning roles. As mentioned earlier in this guide, L&D roles aren’t the same as other

jobs like customer service operations, or marketing. You need to understand the verbiage of L&D because of the specificity of

the skills that candidates possess. But while they were interested in pursuing agile talent as a solution, they had another

challenge: their company wasn’t set up to hire contractors directly. Instead, they would need an agency partner to help them

with the hiring process.

In the midst of a global pandemic, our client-partner had very specific skills it was looking for. Instructional designers were

required to possess a more diverse skill set than in the past. They were looking for many sub-roles under instructional design,

such as the ability to write content, produce graphics, undertake the research, work with SMEs to shape courses, and develop

the program into a final product.

With the clock ticking, we worked to deliver validated candidates at record pace, because as we all know, time is money. In the

end, they were able to fill a position quickly, with a temporary employee who had exactly the hybrid skills they were looking

Many vendors were eager to send them a heap of resumes. But, when searching for specialized L&D talent, quantity doesn’t

equate to quality. It became clear that their L&D leaders would need to find a vendor that could take a granular approach to

sourcing exactly the talent they needed and those that could easily integrate into their unique work culture.

Working with the CoreAxis team, our partner decided they needed to fill some key hybrid roles. They were looking for L&D

candidates who could not only work on the overall learning strategy, but also help to build the actual content. While it may be

easy to find a standard instructional designer, our client-partner had higher standards.

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for. This is because we have access to extraordinary talent! And we’re extremely proud of our track record of working with our

L&D consultants to help them find their ideal position and organization. It’s a two-way street, after all. The more you treat your

consultants like clients (like people, actually), the more they will be encouraged to deliver their best work.

The Results

Our client-partner was able to fill roles quickly and find the perfect candidates with the desired skill sets. But more than

that, we built a strong relationship where we communicate and collaborate on a regular basis. This has resulted in an agile

approach to agile talent where their L&D can easily reach out for help and get an immediate response. That’s the difference

when working with a staff augmentation vendor who truly gets the unique needs of L&D.

Wrap up

Before we conclude this guide, a few words need to be spoken about how vendors treat their consultants. It’s so important that

your vendor treats their talent like clients themselves. This means understanding each person’s sweet spot for their talents—

what they love to do and will accel at. Vendors need to show a track record of listening, collaborating, and supporting the

personal and professional lives of their consultants—the same as they would with a client.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

For us, having a deep connection with our talent means that we can help you get through the hard parts of filling roles and that

our team can only grow stronger. Underneath this whole cultural transformation to hybrid workplaces, remote workers, and new

business processes, is building a new and healthy culture. It’s not enough to simply settle for filling gaps and “keeping the boat

afloat.” Rather, you can take the opportunity to work with vendors and employees who understand how to shape the culture

you’re looking to create within your L&D team and your organization.

I hope that you’ve found this guide helpful and informative. As well, I hope that it’s taken a bit of the stress out of facing the

new year and a new workplace. And while this may be a complex time for your L&D team, remember that you can always reach

out to us for answers to your questions.

508-485-8660 coreaxis.cominfo@coreaxis.com