Wearing Too Many Hats? How To Delegate Your Workload in Finance

When working in a senior finance role, it is easy to be absorbed into other functions such as marketing, operations, HR, and more because accounting has such a huge role to play in all areas of a business. That being said, there is a huge importance in regularly reassessing your function in line with the needs of the business and your personal capacity. This can prove to be cost effective, strengthen team bonds, boost morale, and allows for adaptability to a changing market. In this article we will discuss how to delegate your workload in finance, and we will further delve into the benefits of doing so.

1. Isn’t wearing lots of hats a good thing in finance roles?

Absolutely! In finance roles (or any role for that matter), taking on new tasks and responsibilities is a great way to grow your skillset, achieve promotions, and gain authority in the workplace. That being said, sometimes doing too much can spread your skillset thin over a wide variety of roles. Instead of doing a select number of functions extremely well, you may find yourself doing more functions at a lower quality and with more stress and time constraints on yourself. This may also affect your mental health. In this case, it is often more productive for the company for you to re-assess where you are most valuable.

2. Adaptability is important in finance

It is also important to note that your role will need to adapt with the needs of the business. The scope of your role is not always optional. If it is absolutely essential for a CFO to step into other areas of the business to cover a responsibility, then that is a normal part of a changing company landscape and is beneficial. However, the core element of this is being able to be flexible. If your role grew to adapt to past business needs and hasn’t evolved to reflect where you’re best placed now, that is where a reassessment of your function will best benefit the company or team you’re in.

3. Assess where you’re best placed

To streamline your workload when you have too much to do, it is important to take a step back. Looking at your role from a distance, where do your skills lie the most? Are there any parts of your role that nobody else in the company can do, and are there any that others could cover?

By assessing where you are the most crucial, you can begin to allocate your energy to areas that need your attention the most, and you can begin to re-distribute workload that isn’t suited to your role or skillset.

3. Discuss your position with trusted members of management

Once you have rationale behind the re-allocation of your skillset, it is worth bringing your strategy to trusted members of management. Firstly, it’s important to discuss the financial value that more strategically allocating your resources could bring to the company. For example, if you are a more senior financial professional, you may be working for a high salary whilst completing roles that a different member of the team’s specialised skillset could cover. The tasks that you’re covering may also be able to be covered by a lower salary band. Therefore, if this is the case, ‘wearing too many hats’ could take away your focus from your own expensive or niche skillset, which could be at a detriment to the company.

Once you have established the value that allocating some of your functions could have, you can continue to communicate with the management team to develop the most efficient strategy for the company.

4. Delegate within your team

Once you have assessed where you’re best placed and discussed your position with other members of senior management, the next step is to place your faith in your team. This step involves trust, but if you are surrounded by a competent team who consent to this adjustment of your resources, you will find that many processes can continue to run without your involvement. There may be an adjustment period at first in the transfer of skills and responsibilities to your colleagues, but ultimately agreements like these allow your colleagues to upskill themselves and allow you to excel in your financial role. You may also find that doing this builds relationships and trust within your team. It can be notoriously lonely in financial management roles, so being able to depend on colleagues is a also great step for mental health in leadership. This in turn has a positive impact on productivity.

5. Consider hiring to cover key areas

The elephant in the room is: what if there simply isn’t anyone in the company that can cover the roles that you have absorbed? In this case, bearing in mind the expense of your time and the strain on your resources, hiring interim or permanent staff could be a financially beneficial way to cover any roles outside of your core areas. To avoid risks associated with hiring, one strategy could be to hire contract or fixed term staff to assess whether the role is financially / operationally beneficial, before creating a permanent opening.

If you would like to discuss financial recruitment or hiring strategies, get in touch with us here.

Key Takeaways

While sometimes covering a lot of areas within your finance role is necessary and a great opportunity for advancement, sometimes it can be unproductive and cause burnout. To avoid this, being flexible is important within a leadership role in accounting. Regularly reassessing the needs of the business and where you are best placed is the most efficient way to ensure that your skillset is being used efficiently. To achieve this, you can communicate with your colleagues, delegate to your team, and hire to fill in skill gaps. Overall, this should save your business money and time, build trust in your team, and reduce your mental load.

Please get in touch with us here if you would like to discuss any of the topics mentioned in this article further, or if you would like us to help you to recruit for your finance team.