10 tasks to delegate to grow your business

Delegating tasks fairly and effectively is an important part of being a good business leader. While it’s often hard to let go, knowing when to delegate tasks provides mental relief and prevents burnout for busy business owners, helping you achieve long-term success and profitability.

While every business has its own set of considerations and priorities, letting someone else take over certain tasks helps you focus on what matters the most, whilst providing an opportunity for another employee to grow and add more value.

Maximising the importance of delegating tasks

Effective business leaders don’t carry out every work task themselves; they know how to delegate key responsibilities to the right people. Delegation is a vital skill and helps the business reach its goals faster.

Not every business owner can delegate the same things. When your business is just getting off the ground, you may have to handle almost everything on your own. But once you're in the position to do so, delegating tasks that are outside of your expertise improves output and allows you to focus on the areas you are more specialised in. 

Tasks to delegate

As your business becomes successful and you find yourself with more responsibilities and resources, you might consider delegating aspects of your workload.

Here are some examples of tasks you might want to delegate:

1. Accounting/Bookkeeping: you should always keep an eye on your overall financials. However, you can likely delegate the smaller daily tasks, such as sending out invoices, inputting financial information, managing payroll, and maintaining records.
2. Administrative: managing your calendar, scheduling appointments, returning phone calls, booking travel plans, and even sorting through emails collectively take up a fair chunk of time every day. Using a virtual, or in-house, assistant may save you several hours.
3. Customer service: once your business grows, you don’t have to be the first person customers call. Other employees can easily handle customer service enquiries and bring you in only if you’re needed.
4. Data entry: if possible, postpone data entry until you’ve got enough data to make the task worthwhile, and then outsource or automate it.
5. IT support: learning how to solve computer problems may take more of your time than hiring someone to handle it for you. Partnering with an IT consultant or managed service provider is often a cost-effective way of adding expertise to your business that extends beyond problem-solving and troubleshooting.
6. Marketing: while it’s important to maintain oversight over your marketing strategy, you’ll likely save a lot of time and effort by finding experienced marketers to handle the day-to-day aspects of marketing, such as writing ad or website copy, designing and placing ads, and scheduling blog posts or social media content.
7. Packing and shipping: whether you're sending out direct mail and promotional products or fulfilling product orders, you might delegate the envelope-stuffing, packing, and labelling to someone else.
8. Production: even if your business makes handmade products, such as jewellery or housewares, you might delegate production at some point so the business can grow.
9. Website: designing, updating and securing the safety of your business website may be best left to a professional to ensure the website is looking its best and you’re remaining compliant with data protection regulations.
10. Writing: running a small business may require lots of writing, from proposals and blog posts to white papers and reports. Even if you’re a good writer, you might save time by having an employee or freelance writer develop a first draft for you to edit.

Identify the right person for the job

It’s crucial to delegate tasks to someone who’s well placed to handle the extra responsibility. Depending on the size of your business, the importance of the task, the available budget, and the length of work needed, you could delegate effectively to family, employees, or outsourced contractors.

IF YOU'RE FEELING READY TO DELEGATE, HAVING A PROCESS WILL HELP YOU DELEGATE EFFECTIVELY AND REAP THE BIGGEST BENEFITS.

The right person for the job could be employed or a freelancer, depending on your needs, and will help ensure overall business productivity. 

• Family members: if your business is brand new or very small, sometimes family members may be your best bet to help you with small tasks. 
• Employees: if a task is part of the core functions of your business, such as customer service, you’ll want to delegate it to an employee so you can supervise and coach the person more closely.
• Outsourcing: there are many tasks you might delegate to freelancers or independent contractors who specialise in a certain discipline. Everything from IT consulting and website design to marketing, copywriting and bookkeeping may be effectively delegated to an external business partner.

How to delegate tasks effectively

Delegation, in many ways, requires a shift from operating the business to leading it. If you're feeling ready to delegate, having a process will help you delegate effectively and reap the biggest benefits. Here are some key considerations:

• Choose the right people: it’s vital to choose people you trust and who have the skills and experience to handle the job – or the intelligence to learn it.
• Create systems and processes: develop clear directions for each task you delegate, clearly stating the steps of the task, what materials or tools are required, and what outcome you want. For example: “Go through my emails every day at 8 AM, noon, and 4 PM and use these templates to answer the ones that can get a standard reply. Forward more important ones to me and label them as urgent or non-urgent accordingly. The goal is for me to get through my emails faster.”
• Start small: consider delegating one small task to a person you’re considering. For example, if you're testing an employee to manage all your social media, you might start by having them schedule a social media post before writing and posting content. Make room for any questions to clarify best practices.
• Communicate regularly: open communication is key to successful delegation. You may have to constantly communicate with some people, while others, such as an IT consultant, may only need weekly or monthly contact. In either case, consider setting up systems and timelines for when and how to communicate (for example, check in every morning and afternoon, meet by Skype once a month, etc.).
• Don’t micromanage: once people know their assigned tasks, they should be able to handle them without further interference from you. While you don’t have to give up all responsibility, micromanaging won’t ease your workload.

The takeaway

By implementing delegation tactics, you may find your schedule frees up to focus on the bigger picture. This allows you can grow your business faster and more effectively by focusing on strategic value-adding activities, rather than the time-consuming – and at times all-encompassing – ‘little things’.