It can be very difficult to delegate your work. Some business owners struggle to let go and trusting another person. There is a fear that someone else would no do as high quality of a job as they would. Perhaps there is a concern that nobody else cares as much about your business as you do.
Some people are perfectionists and need to see things done in a specific way. As well as this, it may be difficult to relinquish control. However, it is important to overcome this and learn to trust someone else, or your business will suffer.
4 Signs It May Be Time To Delegate Your Work
If you work in management or if you are a business owner – you are going to go through periods with an extraordinary amount of work and stress. While you need to put in time and effort and face long nights and early mornings spent at the office, above all it is important not to let yourself burn out.
Delegating not only helps you stay fresh, in consequence, it can also make your business be more productive and successful.
How do you know when it is time to delegate or outsource your work to someone else?
1. You Simply Can’t Keep Up
Firstly, a big indicator that you are stretched too thin is that you feel like you can’t step away from work.
You work really hard, but you simply don’t have time to complete all of the tasks. Although you put in hours of work and tick of the tasks, the to-do-list keeps growing.
Furthermore, you may have started to miss deadlines, and as a result, this has caused a snowball effect that leads to further work. Perhaps it has become a common occurrence that work is not submitted when it’s supposed to be, emails are left without a response for too long and there is a slight, constant panic at any given moment that you have forgotten something.
At this stage, it is important to review that to-do-list. Begin to consider how much of your time is spent on day-to-day administrative tasks that could easily be done by someone else. Your time is important (and limited). Therefore, it should be focused on business development, strategy, and decision making – not on routine matters.
Every time you are doing a task that you feel you shouldn’t be doing (those that aren’t high priority, complex or strategic), it’s an indication that you are not delegating enough.
2. You Are Totally Burnt Out
If your stress level is rising, and you start to experience a short temper, reduced patience, and difficulty in sleeping it could be a sign you need to delegate more. For example; does your calendar includes “time-off”, or reminders to log out? In addition, do you get stressed about simple things like cooking, hair appointments, or car maintenance? Lastly, can you remember when you last had a full “free” weekend?
Stress goes in a cycle and inefficiency starts to stack up and it can easily lead to a downward spiral.
Recognizing that you want more freedom in both your business and personal life is healthy – both for you and for the business. If you’ve lost the spark that got you excited about what you do in the first place, try thinking of the tasks that take you away from the work you love.
One of my favourite things to hear from a client is how they feel like a weight has been lifted off of their shoulders after I take over those tasks for them.
3. Someone else is better suited for the task
You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. Very few people (if any) are skilled at every task required to run their business.
Some common tasks that are delegated to Virteffic are minute writing, or services relating to social media.
I am certain that you can find some tasks in your workload that does not come naturally to you. These tasks often take longer for you to do, and to try to learn how to do everything is not the best solution. It is a waste of your time to struggling to do a job that you are not good at. In addition, the result may not be the best for your business image.
4. New more important priorities
You had much more time to do ” a little bit of everything” in the beginning, when you just started your business. Your time becomes more limited as your business grows.
If much of your time is eaten up by administrative tasks, delegating could help you shift focus to high-priority tasks. Learning to delegate may just be the thing that takes your business to the next level.
How Virteffic Can Assist You
The troubles above can disappear or be reduced if you find a great virtual assistant who is compatible with you and your business needs.
Virteffic Limited provides virtual assistant, secretarial support, and administration services to other businesses. The aim is to provide efficient, high-quality services on a flexible basis.
Let Virteffic handle the day to day administration so that you can focus on growing your business.
The services are fully flexible and tailored to the needs of your business.
If you are reluctant or find it difficult to delegate your work – start with small steps. Some clients may just delegate a small “test” task for say 2 hours and wait to see the result before delegating further tasks. The great thing is that the service agreement is drafted so that you only pay for the time and services that you require and you can stop at any time.
It takes time to build up trust, and with time, you will find it easier to delegate. Eventually, you will start seeing the results, and experience reduced pressure. Once you start to delegate, you will start noticing more and more delegation opportunities as new projects come up.
Background and Merits
I am Tess Price, the founder and virtual assistant of Virteffic Limited. By way of background, I am a qualified chartered secretary and an associate of ICSA. I also hold a Bachelor of Social Science in both economics and financial administration. I have been working in the private wealth and corporate services industry in Jersey for almost 15 years. This has given me strong technical expertise and an excellent understanding of the financial industry. My expertise is most noteworthy in governance, policies & procedures, and in all aspects of company secretarial work. For further background, I invite you to review my Bio and CV.
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