5 Effective Strategies to Delegate Responsibilities Among Employees

According to a survey, only one-third of managers are considered good delegators by their team.

Managers often mistake delegation as passing off work. In reality, it’s not the case. Delegation empowers your team, builds trust, and helps them develop new skills and gain knowledge.

While the benefits of delegating the work are plentiful, many managers still fail to delegate effectively. As a result, it can lower employee productivity, engagement, and negatively impact the project’s progress.

Therefore, the onus is on managers to master the art of delegation in order to succeed and lay the foundation for effective leadership.

This article explains some strategies to delegate tasks among resources effectively. Let’s begin with some basics.

What is delegation & why is it important?

Delegation implies transferring responsibilities to those who report to you or are your subordinates within an organization. When a manager or a leader delegates responsibility to others, they ensure that the resources are assigned tasks according to their skills. This provides the employee with an opportunity to grow in a positive direction. Thus, it improves their performance, which results in the timely delivery of the project.

Once a task is delegated, the resource is held accountable to complete it as per the quality expectation. This will motivate them to achieve the best results and boost their overall productivity.

Additionally, whenever managers delegate a task to their subordinates, they trust them to do the job well. By knowing that their superiors believe in them, employees gain a sense of purpose in the organization. This strengthens the relationship between the employer and the employee.

Thus, delegating tasks to subordinates allows managers to focus on higher-level strategic tasks and advance the organization’s long-term objectives.

Having learned how beneficial delegation is, let us look at some effective delegation strategies to cultivate high-performing teams.

How to delegate responsibility among employees?

Source: shrm.org

Here are five effective strategies for delegating responsibility among employees –

1. Create an action plan before delegation of tasks

Before starting the delegation process, managers should formulate an action plan and enlist the task roles required. This is one of the essential steps in the delegation as it will help you define the project goals.

Additionally, by creating a project plan, you can form a team, figure out what type of tasks are delegated to which resources and explain those responsibilities. This will make everyone aware of their roles and be on the same page during the project execution.

2. Determine the level of authority to task owner

When managers tend to micromanage and control project tasks, it doesn’t give enough independence to resources to accomplish their tasks. To avoid this situation, it is essential to clearly define the level of authority you want every team member to have regarding their job roles.

This will ensure that every task owner has the authority and autonomy to execute the task and make immediate decisions. It will also make them feel motivated to work and give them a sense of purpose.

3. Delegate the task to competent employees

While delegating tasks, managers should ascertain that the right resource is assigned to the right job. For this, managers can first assess an employee’s skills, location, availability, cost, etc. This will allow them to delegate the task to the best-fit resources in the firm.

Also, if the required skillsets are unavailable in the organization, they can either conduct different training or upskilling programs or hire new resources. When a resource works on a task according to their skillset, it increases their productivity and enhances efficiency, thereby completing the project within the deadline.

4. Establish a clear communication channel

Source: veloceinternational.com

As a manager, it is vital to convey the project scope, objectives, and deliverables to team members right from the start. This will ensure that everyone understands the project interdependencies and their respective roles as the project progresses. To achieve this, it’s necessary to establish a proper communication channel between you and the team members for collaboration.

Moreover, by doing so, managers can get real-time updates from their subordinates about project progress and ensure that all the milestones are achieved. A clear communication channel will also enable them to identify the bottlenecks that resources face and then find ways to mitigate them.

5. Monitor resource performance regularly

After delegating tasks, managers need to ensure that the project’s end goal meets the client’s expectations. This can be accomplished by regularly measuring their performance and ensuring that the resources are fulfilling their duties within the stipulated deadline.

Also, managers can track the utilization levels of employees by analyzing the forecast vs. actual reports. It will allow them to understand whether a resource is being over or underutilized. As a result, managers can implement various measures to streamline the workload. In addition to that, they can even provide constructive feedback to bridge any performance gap.

Now, let’s look at how resource management helps in the process of delegation.

How can resource management software help in effective delegation?

Saviom’s futuristic resource management software can help managers in the effective delegation of responsibility among employees.

Here’s how –

• The resource management tool provides 360 visibilities of all the employees in the organization facilitating the efficient allocation of resources. Before assigning a project, the manager can check the availability, schedule, experience, skillset, etc. This ensures that the right resources with the right skills are delegated for the right task.
• Also, the tool helps in providing real-time reports like- forecast vs. actual, capacity vs. demand, utilization report, etc. With the help of these, managers can understand how the resources are utilized and identify the demand gap, etc.
• Accordingly, they can implement optimizing techniques such as resource leveling and smoothing to streamline workloads. It ensures that employees can work efficiently, so projects are completed on time and within budget.

Conclusion:

“Delegation: the key to keeping a business running smoothly.”

Source: omadasearch.com

The quote mentioned above is absolutely accurate; effective delegation helps a business function smoothly. With the strategies explained in this blog and the right resource management tool, managers can effectively delegate responsibility among the employees. This will boost their productivity and engagement and enable them to be more efficient. Furthermore, it allows managers to focus on the bigger goals and achieve them without being distracted by low-priority tasks.