Supervisory Management Unit 4

Assignment

SCENARIO: Roger has recently been hired by ABC Limited to perform administrative work. However, since his arrival at the firm, he has been twiddling his thumbs, waiting for instructions. His boss, Mr Ryan, is a very busy and introvert individual. He resents that he has been given an assistant.

Delegating

The practice of turning over work or tasks to the subordinates by the senior management in a business is known as delegation. Among the many factors that make management successful, delegation is one of them. This is because it not only gets the staff to do the work but it also assures them that their boss trust them. Delegation therefore is a very powerful motivational tool that can be used by every manger that needs his or her employers to become better at what they do.

How to Delegate in Order to Increase the Performance of Employees

Delegation gives the employees enough freedom, authority and responsibility to meet any company’s set goals. There are many ways that management can decide to carry out delegation in an organization. When delegating, the manager has to pick the right person to delegate the tasks to. It is important that before assigning a particular task to an employee, you carefully examine their skills and knowledge on the task in question. This ensures that each person is assigned a task they will fully commit to and achieve within a set time, using the available resources.

At times, work can delegated to one person. This is usually done to help improve the chosen individual’s performance, increase his or her production level or make them more focused on achieving the set goals. Once you delegate work, it is necessary that you ask the person who has been assigned the job to provide you with their work progress. However, you should always remember that you have only delegated the work but not shown how it should be done. When delegating, you are simply telling the employee that you trust their capabilities. As a result, they should come up with the most effective way of achieving the given task.

When delegating work, you need to clearly indicate the expected results for the task in question. You can mention all those who should be involved in achieving the task, how and where to get the resources and any other necessary information. While the employee undertakes the task, ensure you maintain an open communication process. This will make it easy for the person to report to you on the progress made as well as seek assistance if they need any.

There is always the chance you will not be satisfied with the results of the project. In such a situation, you should not try to do the task yourself because this will make the involved employee feel unmotivated. Try to reason things out together with the person and offer any assistance they might need in perfecting their work. Also, do not forget to congratulate them for the work done. This helps to motivate them and they become more focused in offering better services.

Benefits of Delegation

The following are some of the main benefits of delegation.

Increased work quality

When employees are given full responsibility over their specified tasks within the organization, they get a chance to better understand the products and services offered by the company. This in turn increases their performance. It also makes them feel motivated due to the fact that the management is entrusting them with certain tasks. This will make them work even harder to maintain that trust.

Improves the organizational flow of authority

Delegation acts as a ground on which the superior-subordinate relationship stands. The top management delegates tasks to the subordinates and this helps to ensure that all the set goals of the organization are achieved.

Offer personal benefits to the managers

The managerial tasks are normally very hectic and managers barely have time to deal with their personal issues. Through delegation, managers can get time to do other activities as they assign tasks to their subordinates. Through delegation, they can also get time to focus more on controlling and planning of company issues.

Improve the skills of their subordinates

By delegating tasks to subordinates, you give them full responsibility and freedom to apply their knowledge in achieving a certain task. Since you are not controlling them, they feel a sense of pride and will therefore do their best to ensure that the task is achieved. This, in turn, would improve their skills and knowledge, and they also come up with new ways of achieving certain objectives. With delegation, the organization will have more effective decision makers.

Monitoring work progress and achievements

Subordinates will do their best to ensure that work assigned to them flows smoothly. They will feel the need to provide you with the daily performance or progress of the job they are doing. This would give you a chance to concentrate on other matters while still keeping track of what is going on in the company.

Creation of work teams with desired skills and knowledge about a certain task

People’s knowledge and skills regarding different tasks tend to vary depending on the individual. While you delegate, you could create teams based on an individuals’ skills and knowledge in certain areas. It is actually through delegation that you can create strong teams in your organization, each one of them depending on the capabilities you discover in every employee.

Motivation tool

As the teams submit their daily performance reports, take the opportunity to congratulate them on a job well done. This would motivate them to become better employees. You could also use this opportunity to reward their good work and offer guidance where they seem stuck.

In order to achieve the benefits discussed above, management should ensure that work is delegated properly. There are very serious damages that can be caused by improper delegation. For instance it could affect the overall production of the company, or lead to poor completion of tasks, which could affect the entire company. It is therefore advisable that managers ensure they delegate the right work to the right people. In addition, managers should also be readily available to offer guidance to their subordinates. The truth is that delegation could be very successful and helpful in improving a company’s production if management delegates carefully.