Delegate Work to Employees, Delegate Administration to the PEO
Harry Potter would probably make a great small business owner. Actually, any wizard would make a great small business owner. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could pull out your wand and cast a spell to bring customers knocking on your door? Or at least cast a spell to make your workload smaller? Unfortunately, small business owners do not attend Hogwarts and while the magical world of wizardry can be experienced at the theater, PEOcompare cannot match you up with a wizard professor. We can, however, offer some advice on how to lessen your load. There are two ways to do so: through a PEO and through effective delegation.
Delegation is giving work or responsibility to someone else. Effective delegation is also the key to becoming a successful small business owner. The purpose of effective delegation is to pass along work to somebody else as this allows you time to focus on other tasks without having to worry about making sure the delegated work is actually completed in an efficient manner. How can you do this? Try these tips:
Consider why you are delegating certain tasks.
The reason you are delegating is so that you have a lighter load, but that does not mean you should force the responsibility of running the whole business onto someone else. Delegate tasks that are not required of the owner. At the same time it is a good idea to review the work you have someone else do so that it matches the high level of quality you expect of your company.
Remember that you are delegating tasks to employees.
Do not give a task to an employee that you know he or she will not be able to handle. Consider your employees’ strengths and weaknesses when delegating. If you do not, you will be forced to waste time correcting or redoing the work you should have delegated to someone more suitable for the task. Be careful not to overwhelm an employee. Delegation is meant to relieve you of some of your burden but you do not want to bury your employee in work because Bob, for example, will either not have time to complete the delegated assignment or he will put in less effort knowing there is other work that must be done. This defeats the purpose of delegation.
Be realistic.
This ties into the last idea; do not give your employees more than they can handle or expect them to do something that you would not do. If you are delegating a task because you were not able to get to it, do not hand it to an employee asking them to have it done by the next day. Delegation is commonly done for large projects, when there are lots of people working together with ample time. This works well because the time constraints are reasonable. Are you being reasonable when you delegate?
If you are delegating tasks that revolve around providing your service or selling your product, you will be delegating work to your employees. If, however, you wish to delegate administrative tasks, consider a professional employment organization, or PEO. A PEO company takes on the role of a co-employer, dealing with the boring (but necessary) tasks every business has to manage, such as filing payroll taxes and obtaining worker’s comp insurance for employees. PEOs reduce administrative work and business risk for the small business owner while still giving the owner direct control over his or her employees. This means you can delegate to a PEO and to your employees at the same time!
In order to effectively delegate you do not need a magic wand. In fact, you do not need any magic at all, just the confidence that you can do it. If you wish to effectively delegate to your employees consider the tips above. If you want to look into outsourcing payroll, that is, you want to effectively delegate tasks to a PEO, do your research first. Just as you need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your employees before you decide who to assign a task to, you also should compare PEOs to see which one would work best for your company. Good luck delegating!
About the Author
Anthony Kelly is a frequent contributor to PEOcompare.com and has experience working for small businesses and employee leasing companies since 1997.
PEOcompare.com provides resources for the small business owner to find top PEO companies that match his unique criteria. Companies such as Paychex, ADP, and TriNet.
