As a small business grows the manager or owner will find it increasingly difficult to retain close control over all aspects of the business. Normally recruitment is initially made in order to respond to a particular need to take over or share a role that the business owner now has insufficient time to cope with. The common thread is that initially most small business owners do not recruit new skills – just an extra “pair of hands”.

As further growth occurs the need for new skill sets is normally identified and a choice must be made whether to acquire those skills through specialist recruitment or by training and developing current staff.

It is when facing these first two predicaments that that small business owners first grapple with how to organise the delegation of tasks to employees – and it is often done in an unstructured, ill-considered “fire-fighting” manner, with little or no regard for long term objectives. At first tasks tend to be assigned in a very prescriptive way. Everything is required to be done exactly as the business owner would otherwise have done it. The logic is fairly persuasive – a growing small business must be doing things right – and to keep doing things that way seems an obvious choice.

But is it a sensible one?  How can time management skills assist?

As the small business grows further, this close control becomes less possible, and it inhibits staff from bringing their own talents to bear and can lead to frustration and discontent – few people like to be closely directed in everything they do.

At some stage the small business owner must face the fact that the business will not continue to grow in the same way as it did initially – and neither can he/she continue to oversee everything in minute detail. Further growth normally depends upon allowing staff to take some responsibility for their own time mangement, to use their own individual talents fully – and to find a way in which that can be done within a framework that best achieves the organisation’s goals. This will also enhance organisational flexibility and readiness to respond to the unforeseen.

Delegation

The delegation of tasks is an excellent way to develop staff – and done correctly staff can acquire new skills that benefit the organisation, and also exhibit heightened motivation with a corresponding sense of responsibility.

Whilst a manager cannot abdicate responsibility for tasks, the person to whom a task is delegated can be made responsible for the manner in which a delegated task is carried out – provided it is truly delegated in the right way.

It is a truism that if you give someone a task and prescribe every single aspect of how it is to be undertaken, then the person does not develop any sense of responsibility for that task. Without that you cannot expect people to make best use of their time whilst undertaking the tasks allotted to them. Why should they? However if you give a person the freedom to carry out and manage many aspects of the delegated task then they will normally feel obliged to do so responsibly.

This will encourage the new member of staff to practice time management skills, and, if needed, the small business owner must be prepared to make resources available for these new skills to be learned.

However the manager must be prepared to accept that in embarking along the road of staff development and delegation, then outcomes will not be entirely as they would have been had he/she undertaken the task personally. Within small businesses this can be very difficult – the business owner is seldom very far removed from the task. Defining a range of acceptable outcomes will allow both parties to become accustomed to this.

It is wise to do this over time gradually entrusting staff with more complex and demanding tasks and time management as they demonstrate their ability to cope. It is vital that a manager plans ahead so staff are not asked to undertake tasks that they are not ready for.

When delegating tasks a number of aspects will be agreed, and among others these will be a defined range of acceptable outcomes and use of resources.

Within the context of time management (there are others) your judgement as to whether the delegation was successful is limited just to these things: was the task completed within the range of acceptable outcomes (time used effectively) using the resources agreed (time used economically) and on time (time used efficiently).

Brian Hazell.