Hiring Medtech talents to work short-term on your project has benefits like cost savings, faster time to market, and access to experts. However, it's often challenging to integrate these talents into an existing in-house structure and workflow without a plan. The absence of a plan creates collaboration, compliance, communication, budget, and other issues.
In this article, you will learn some strategies you can implement to ensure your in-house team and short-term talent work effectively, and you can enjoy the benefits of staff augmentation.
Establish Your Team Structure
The team structure is the first and most important factor in integrating short-term talents for MedTech projects. Having a well-defined structure helps with communication, collaboration, and seamless flow. It is like a vehicle with different parts. Knowing where each part should be and their function helps when replacing them.
The same rule applies when adding temporary Medtech talent to your in-house team. You should have a defined organizational structure stating the flow of information from one member to the other. When creating your team structure, you should:
- Identify team leads and project sponsors
- Establish reporting relationships
- Define escalation paths
- Set up buddy systems for knowledge-sharing
- Creating role-specific responsibility matrices
When the team structure is defined, short-term talents can integrate seamlessly without having to “CC” multiple people to get a response on important project details.
Define Communication Mediums
Whether you have temporary talent working onsite or remotely, a clear communication path helps you organize project deliverables faster. If there are communication gaps in medical technology projects, it can lead to serious consequences. Some include compliance issues and delayed time to market. You should inform the team members of the fixed communication strategy and tools.
For example, if your company uses a legacy tool for communication, the short-term talent should be aware of how it works and trained on how it works. Your communication strategy should also include:
- Daily stand-up meetings (15 minutes maximum)
- Weekly project status reviews
- Dedicated Slack/Teams channels for different workstreams
- Documentation repositories with version control
- Use the buddy system to verify outputs
- Regular feedback sessions
- Emergency contact protocols
You can choose activities that suit your company culture, but beware of the meeting trap. Do not be so obsessed with feedback that it wastes the project time.
Create a Seamless Onboarding Process
A comprehensive onboarding process should begin before the temporary staff's first day. Unlike in-house long-term employees, a temporary staff needs to start working immediately. Since they are hired for specific project needs, the onboarding process shouldn't be lengthy and complicated. Your onboarding process should include:
- System Access
- Team introduction
- Company process orientation
- Project details packet and other relevant information
Ideally, the onboarding should be over in 3–7 days to allow the MedTech talent to focus on delivering the project requirements you need without distractions.
Create Knowledge Base
If you have to hire short-term talent often, creating a knowledge repository helps maintain compliance with MedTech projects. A knowledge base contains all relevant information about the company, project process, and more. If you have hired temporary staff previously, you should also document answers to any questions or challenges they had to help new hires when such arises. A knowledge base should contain:
- Regulatory requirements and updates
- Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) Technical specifications
- Project histories and lessons learned
- Common troubleshooting guides
- Contact lists and escalation procedures
- Quality management system documentation
- Training materials and certifications
- Code repositories and documentation
- Testing protocols and validation procedures
- Linking Knowledge Base to onboarding process to enable need-to-know process
Instead of training the temporary staff in separate meetings, they can access knowledge-based resources and get all the details from a centralized location. This makes it easier to integrate with your in-house team seamlessly.
Define Clear Scope of Work
Unlike in-house teams, which have more experience with the project and priorities, short-term talent doesn't. They need a clearly defined role with specific deliverables, timelines, and success metrics. The absence of such documentation might lead the talent to prioritize the wrong deliverables, leading to delays and compliance issues.
When creating the scope of work document, include:
- Project objectives
- Deliverables
- Timeline with specific milestones
- Resource requirements
- Development Process and Procedures
- Success criteria
- Quality metrics
- Compliance requirements
- Testing and validation requirements
- Documentation expectations
- Handover requirements
- Risk management considerations
Train Your In-house Team
This is a step most MedTech companies skip, and it's based solely on an assumption. One that believes all team members should be able to work with temporary staff efficiently. But if you conduct a survey, you'd be surprised how many full-time employees struggle with the change that introducing short-term talent into their project flow creates.
So, it's also an effective strategy to train your in-house staff on collaboration and adapting to the changes. Your training should cover:
- Collaboration tips and practices
- Tools to enhance collaboration and communication
- Management skills for team leads and other relevant areas unique to your business
- The in-house team can provide feedback for continual improvements.
- Short-term talent can provide cross-training opportunities.
Ideally, this training will help them adjust to working with unfamiliar faces and the disruption that follows when the contract ends. It will also help ease the transition back to the status quo when the temporary talent completes their contract.
Partner with a MedTech Staff Augmentation Company
Selecting the right staffing augmentation vendor can reduce integration challenges. These companies have access to qualified talent and can pair you with the best fit for your project.
Short-term IT talents from staff augmentation vendors have experience working with in-house teams. This experience makes it easier for them to integrate with your team. When selecting a MedTech staff augmentation vendor, look for agencies that:
- Understand MedTech industry requirements
- Have access to pre-vetted, qualified talent
- Provide comprehensive support throughout the engagement
- Offer candidates with prior experience in collaborative environments
- Maintain robust quality assurance processes
At ITR, we provide comprehensive support throughout the engagement lifecycle. Our talents are hired following best practices, guaranteeing you get the best IT staff for short-term project needs. Want to hire MedTech devices talent for your project? Start with our 20-hour free technical development support to see how it works.
