
Being unable to delegate is often the hurdle that stops a business from rapid expansion. The businesses that I have seen experience explosive growth all have a founder/MD that is able to delegate. It’s this realisation that has taught me to hand over responsibility where deserved. Although delegating doesn’t always work out, there are plenty of times when it has really helped our business. Equally, sharing responsibility is a great motivator and confidence boost for those whom you work with, showing them you believe in their ability.
How can you tell when someone can be relied upon to take on more responsibility?
Every person varies so it’s a matter of leadership ability to know when that person is ready to take on more responsibility. Having worked in a position of leadership as well as plenty of roles under a manager, it is frustrating and de-motivating for employees if they aren’t given more responsibility when it is deserved. This makes the task of delegation key to developing a positive working environment.
What factors contribute to a decision to outsource a service, rather than delegate to someone in-house?
Affordability is the main factor for us but I am sure it will vary from case to case. We assess whether it is financially worth outsourcing a service, thereby freeing up our time to focus on other areas, or whether our workload would currently allow for us to manage that service/area ourselves, leaving funding and resources for another area.
Social media can be quite time consuming and it is relatively inexpensive to outsource, so we made the decision to put internal resources elsewhere and appoint a company with a good track record to manage it for us. When outsourcing we tend to approach three companies for quotes. We were particularly impressed with the suggestions from the company we appointed. The result is an effective social media marketing campaign that generates a positive return on investment, effectively an extension of the Quote Goat team without the overheads for additional office space or the associated risks with employment.
What would be your advice to small business owners struggling to give up some responsibility and delegate to others?
We have seen tremendous growth since we started to outsource/delegate work. I would suggest identifying areas that are currently not receiving enough focus due to a lack of internal resource and then assessing whether more focus on those areas would help your business. If yes, then surely delegating some responsibility is the way to go. What are your plans for the next 12 months?
With the launch of our new comparison system due to happen in two months, our next stage is to create a process to look after and hopefully generate an ongoing relationship with our customers. Alongside this we plan to develop our other comparison solutions on the site to bring them in line with our car and van insurance comparison technology.
This article is part of a wider campaign called the Scale-up Hub, a section of Real Business that provides essential advice and inspiration on taking your business to the next level. It’s produced in association with webexpenses and webonboarding, a fast-growing global organisation that provides cloud-based software services that automate expenses management and streamline the employee onboarding process.
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