8 Best Task Delegation Tips (Secret Sauce for Field Managers)

Finally sharing the 8 best task delegation tips for field managers to make their workflow smooth and field teams happier.

Operating a field service business requires extreme patience and effective management of tasks. There is so much to be done. You have to entertain service calls, plan shift schedules for your staff, and work on strategies that can reduce your operational challenges and attract more business opportunities. Good lord, as a manager, you cannot manage all of it alone.

You need a helping hand. You need to equally distribute tasks to the team —- if you don’t want your business to stumble. Irrespective of whether you are a new manager or simply an experienced one, we are sharing 8 great task delegation tips — you must try them right away and start seeing the difference.

Why is Task Delegation So Crucial for Field Service Businesses?

Here are reasons explaining how delegating tasks positively impacts both managerial and execution field teams.

For Task Managers	For Field Teams
Leaderships get high-impact work done. Lets them do more strategic or high-level work. Helps equally distribute the workload — to avoid pressure. Get the most important or time-critical work done on priority and describe TAT.	Lets the team explore new areas of work — which piques their curiosity. Makes them feel responsible and authoritative while doing work. Gives them the opportunity to prove their calibre and earn good recognition from the line manager who delegated the task.

“If you want to do a few things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.”      –  John. C Maxwell

8 Pro Task Delegation Tips Every Field Manager Should Know

1. Prioritise Tasks, Know What Has to be Delegated

To begin with task delegation, it’s important for you to assess which type of tasks you can easily delegate to your team members. These tasks could be anything, like tasks that you don’t have time for or tasks that you think your team will be able to complete with great dedication and impact.

You can make a grid like this to get the better clarity:

Tasks to be Delegated
Routine Tasks for Team For example, – The daily tasks for field staff of fixing, repairing, and ensuring technical maintenance at the client site.	Urgent Tasks For example, – It could be an urgent requirement to meet the client to show products or services.
Engaging Tasks For example, – The tasks of installing a DTH connection which involves multiple processes of inspection, installation, and maintenance — which can be divided among the team of technicians.	Not That Strategic Tasks For example, – Tasks like catching up with clients, following up on tasks over email, etc.

It would be better if you use an employee task management software that lets you plan, write, and assign tasks to your staff — in one go. It lets you even prioritise urgent tasks and reminds you about their urgency at timely intervals to you and your staff with prompt reminders.

2. Assign Tasks to Skilled Technicians

As a manager, you should be very well-versed about your team’s availability, strengths, bandwidth, and personality traits. It is so because it helps you match your rightfully skilled staff to the right service task. You know that not every task is not suitable for every team member.

Like, suppose you have some finest and skilled technicians good at solving complex repairing needs. While there are some technicians who are fast at doing multiple small jobs and could be a great fit for routine inspection or maintenance.

You can allocate tasks to your field staff based on their:

• Availability – Check your staff’s attendance and leave data to know when they are available or are planning to take leave in the near future.
• Workload and capacity – Analyse the current bandwidth and workload of your staff. Just so you don’t overburden them.

• Level of interest –  Know which type of tasks pique the interest of your staff. Don’t give them petty jobs that restrict their potential.
• Skills and expertise – Assess your staff’s performance report to know which one is underperforming or exceptionally performing.

Access Your Staff’s Performance Report with TrackoField Our field employee management software equips you with timely performance data on your staff. With one click, you can identify: Which staff member closed more tickets (was it Scott or Steve?)? Which staff member has the lowest idling rate or has good reviews from customers? Which staff took the least time to arrive at the task site? Which staff finished off the service or repair task in the first attempt?  Having such data at your disposal helps you manage employee tasks better.

3. Don’t Overburden your Staff (with endless tasks)

Delegation is an art. In any context, delegation doesn’t mean you can forward any and every task to your staff. You have to do it carefully while ensuring that you don’t overstuff your staff with endless tasks.

For that, you need to check your staff’s current tasks and find out if there is any scope to squeeze in more tasks. TrackoField’s employee task management software lets you easily slide in ad-hoc tasks — without interrupting the currently aligned tasks.

4. Track Tasks (without micromanaging)

Micromanaging or spying on delegated tasks is a sin. It’s best if you periodically check the progress or update of assigned tasks. Make this a habit to convey the complete timeline within which you want the task to be delivered or achieved. And reach out to the team only when the prescribed timeline has run its course.

TrackoField offers a very flexible platform where you can track your task delegation– from a distance. Without your team getting that vibe you are spying on them.

Over our specially-curated, color-coded dashboard, you can view:

1. Which employee is at which task
2. Which task is in progress, done, or on the verge of getting completed
3. How much time does it take to complete a certain task (Was it justifiable? That’s your call)

Long story short, you can just click and get the reason behind tasks that were delayed or missed and weren’t completed by the deadline.

5. Provide Authority & Creativity

Imagine you delegate a task to your team but don’t give them any authority to make decisions during unforeseen scenarios or when things don’t go as planned. Each time, they have to ask you, aka the manager, how to go about it. Well, this can be suffocating for your team. You wouldn’t realize, but you will see tasks slowing in progress and taking up a lot of yours and the team’s time.

Give your team flexibility to make decisions, improvise tasks, and do best as per their judgment to make things right.

Delegate Tasks with Authority & Creativity TrackoField’s task scheduling tool allows your team to self-allocate tasks within themselves just in case there is an unavailability of certain staff or certain members have extra tasks on their plate. Voila! Can you smell your team getting empowered with taking charge? Yes, we can too.

6. Celebrate Each Attempted Task

Delegation shouldn’t be boring and intense where you just deploy a task and expect it to be done. Hello, you are missing a piece? Recognition maybe?

Recognising and highlighting your team’s efforts and successful completion of task delegation is like a catalyst that tempts your team to continue working hard.

Acknowledgment is a great motivator that keeps up with your team’s morale. Make it a ritual to celebrate successes and milestones, no matter how petty they are. Recognizing your team’s efforts adds a sense of ownership, accountability, and pride in work.

Here’s how you can keep up with a culture where every win is celebrated:

• Reward the wins, whether big or small. Praise the service technician who always shows up at the job site on time or the sales staff who completes your sales order before the deadline.
• Create a culture of saying “thank you” or shout-outs during team scrums or huddles.
• Encourage a culture where every field manager recognizes their field staff and encourages them instead of pushing their button.

7. Provide Right Resources & Training

Don’t just delegate tasks but also share the complete roadmap for how they should navigate the task with your team. Also, equip your field team with complete task details and resources that can simplify their routine.

TrackoField offers an exclusive executive app that your field technicians can easily install on their smartphones. The app guides your team members about the complete itinerary for the work day and the entire week. The app offers:

• Visibility on how many tasks an individual employee has to do. All are explained with priority and deadline.
• Customers’ details, locations, and best routes to navigate them.
• POD option in the form of barcode scanning and other ways – making it easy for the field team to confirm task completion.
• In-app messaging option with voice notes so that there is constant communication with the dispatching and the field team.

8. Just Don’t Make Excuses to Delegate Tasks

For highly empathetic or first-time task managers, the task delegation process can be overwhelming. Some managers think that they can eat every small to big frog on their own. In parallel, there are other sets of managers who are too shy and deal with the following situations:

• Managers feel guilty about assigning more work to other people – because they don’t want to overburden others.
• They think it’ll take them plenty of time to explain tasks to the team. It would be much less painstaking when they do it themselves.
• They don’t understand the priority of the work and have tasks spread in a haphazard manner.
• The tasks to be delegated are interesting and they find interest in doing such projects by themselves.
• Oftentimes, task managers aren’t sure who else can do this work.

Note for New or Shy Task Managers:

It’s okay to delegate tasks when you have limited time to get things done. If you too are making the above excuses, it’s time to get past them.

Rely on TrackoField’s task management software, making task delegation to your team less overwhelming.

Simplify Task Delegation with TrackoField

The above tips answer your most searched query, “How to delegate tasks effectively?”. So, don’t shy away from using them to simplify the process of delegating tasks to your team. Task delegation is an art and only you can master it with one of the finest field employee task management software like TrackoField. The software equips you with the most practical features to make task allocation to a team of hundreds of technicians a breeze.

You just input the employee and task details, define priority, and allocate a timeline – for the rest, the software will help you distribute jobs in a balanced way to your dedicated field team members.

Did you hear, we are giving a free trial? Why don’t you opt for it and test the product?

FAQs on Task Delegation Tips for Managers

• What is task delegation?

  Task delegation is a process when managers delegate tasks to peers or subordinates — to distribute the workload and ensure equal ownership of work amongst team members. A line manager delegates tasks after measuring factors that tell which employee is most qualified to handle the additional responsibilities — to help the company reach its goals.

• State an example of delegated tasks?

  A delegated task could constitute anything — compiling research, collecting feedback, following up on clients’ emails, chalking out new strategies, etc.