Delegating Workflows

So who is supposed to do what here? Who’s responsible for this?

Do you find yourself asking these questions a lot and getting, “I don’t know” answers? If yes, then you need to reassess the roles of your employees, and then make sure they understand those roles as well. Paying someone to do nothing or to not do their job properly doesn’t really help you, now does it? No.

So if you find that you have a need for extra people to help your business run smoothly, the first thing you should do, as the business owner, is to determine what you want those people to do. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to hire a lot of people to do a few things that one person can do. It also doesn’t make sense to hire one person to do the jobs that many people should be doing. You need to understand the complexity of each task you’ve assigned. To do that, you need to start with a description of what you need. Not who should do it, but what you need done. You start your employee search there.

You may find that you can have one person do a lot of what you need. For example, if you need an office helper, more than likely that person will be able to do many types of office tasks. Make a list of all of the things you want done to keep your business running smoothly. Group those tasks together by type. If you need your phones answered, and you need more new customers, you’d probably need to hire someone to do receptionist work and someone else to do sales. While either of those people could do both, it best to separate the job responsibilities into categories and hire accordingly. Once you have determined what you need done and the categories those tasks would fall into (reception vs. sales, etc), you’ll need to further define what those positions entail. Be detailed in what you want done, how you want it done, and what department is responsible for it. Don’t leave out details, as most people want to be given specifics about what their job is. Even if you have hired a person to make those delegations for you, you still need to be detailed about what you want from your business. If you want to know what accounts, projects, products, etc are being worked on daily, then tell your employees that. They don’t know unless you tell them! If you are vague in your workflow delegations, it leaves people open for confusion, and then of course that just means nothing will get done properly or on time. That’s when you start asking those questions about who’s responsible for this. Nothing good ever really comes from that question!

Alternatively, if you have delegated your workflows, and have provided your employees with the details of what they are supposed to be doing, and they aren’t doing it, then you have an even bigger issue. It is important to allow your people the chance to gain further understanding of what you want. It is possible they interpreted your instructions in a different manor from what you had intended. You have to fix that! If you have confused employees, again that will just lead to a lack of productivity.

There are a lot of things to know as a small business owner. A lot of hats to wear, and fires to put out. That is why you’ll probably find that you need some assistance at some point. Just remember that your employees are people. Some are smart, some not so much. Some are really good at reception and computer work, some not so much. Understand their strengths and weaknesses and delegate as needed. If you allow people to do work they enjoy and are good at, and you’ve been specific about what you expect, you should find that eventually you won’t even have to play watch dog. You can just sit back, read your reports, and know that everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing. Now, let’s just hope they are actually doing it!

Carmella Martinez

LowKeyMedia Marketing Team