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INSOURCING OVERVIEW

Insourcing is the practice of bringing outside staff into your facility to perform specific tasks or projects. Typically, the tasks or projects are specified by your organization and staff supervision is provided by the organization that provides the personnel.

As an example, ABS Bio provides insourced staffing to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for cell culture and biological sample management. They remain our staff and their overall supervision is the responsibility of ABS Bio.

ADVANTAGES OF INSOURCING

So why is insourcing a better option than hiring your own staff or using a temp agency?

The answer is that often it is not the best option. We have found that it works best only in certain circumstances. First, we describe the overall benefits of insourcing. Then, we discuss those situations where we have found that insourcing works best.

Insourcing can meet your organization’s staffing needs for highly qualified personnel on a flexible basis. ABS provides staff to your organization for a specified period, typically one year or more. We handle all staffing recruitment, testing, and training. You specify your project needs and ABS handles supervisory and HR matters. ABS is responsible for all wages and benefits, and your organization pays a single hourly fee based upon time worked.

As your needs change, staff numbers can be increased or decreased without worrying about pensions, severance, or other long-term commitments.

WHAT ABOUT USING A TEMP AGENCY?

In some cases, this may be the best solution. Large temp agencies may have a pool of candidates to draw upon. However, temp workers may or may not be highly screened before coming to your organization. There is almost never any hands-on testing for laboratory staff before a temp worker is sent to you. If you are comfortable with this, are willing to train extensively, or the skill level that is required is low, then this approach may work for you.

Because all ABS insourced staff remain ABS employees, we rigorously screen, test, and train each employee. This includes multiple interviews, a full background check, testing for scientific, computer,

and math skills. Then, candidates are tested in our laboratories doing the same type of work that they would do for you before ever being sent to you for your approval. A temp agency does not have this capability or experience.

OPTIMAL SCENARIO

Perhaps surprisingly, most often we do not recommend insourcing as an initial option. First, we meet with you to fully understand your needs. In many cases, we have found that we can immediately meet your needs handling many services directly from our headquarters laboratories. For example, we can grow and store cells with quick turnaround times in our large cell culture laboratories without the need for placing ABS personnel at your site. With regular updates and reports, it is though our high capacity laboratories are yours. This has immediate impact in saving you time and resources, whereas finding the right candidates for insourcing takes a significantly longer time for the screening, testing, and training process. We stand behind and backup our employees and finding the right personnel takes time.

We have found that insourcing works best for our clients when the insourced staff act to fully integrate our capabilities to meet your needs. This can greatly extend and enhance the resources at your disposal. For example, we specialize in providing insourced staff for cell culture and biological sample storage. We have done these activities every day for nearly 30 years at ABS. Our cell culture laboratory capacity and storage capabilities are much greater than would be found at most pre-clinical R&D laboratories. Providing one or two staff to interface with you to meet your needs is often the most effective approach. We can grow and backup cells at ABS with our insourced staff attending to logistics and supply management for you. Cell supplies, and backup storage are maintained, freeing your resources for research. Likewise, we can acquire and maintain biospecimen inventories according to your specification with an insourced acquisition coordinator and ABS’ global biospecimen network.

Whatever your staffing or research needs, it is important to evaluate how long term your needs are, what infrastructure you need to invest in, and the time and resource costs of these options. Factors such as track record, expertise, and provider service are all critical if you seek external support. Even if the focus is outside our typical scope of what we offer, we are happy share our experiences and insights with you to find the best solution.