Delegation is the buzzword when talking about workforce management solutions. Delegation is the process by which authority is granted to a subordinate by his superior. But for delegation of authority, organizations would remain forever small. Delegation is the only solution to cope with the increasing workload of managers as the organization grows.

Because of the constraints of time and availability, a manager cannot perform all the tasks himself. Therefore, he delegates a certain amount of tasks to subordinates. Authority, on the other hand, is the right to command. It is the discretion power vested with a manager to use organizational resources. Managers acquire authority by virtue of rank or title associated with this position. Authority is granted to individuals in a formal way in the organization. It flows from the top to down in the organization structure.

Responsibility, on the other hand, is obligation to perform tasks and account for their satisfactory completion. It is implied that an individual is expected to fulfill certain job requirements when accepting a position in an organization. In other words, the individual has to answer for the results of a task about to be performed. In contrast to authority, the responsibility of an individual in the organization is always upwards; that is, the subordinate is responsible to his or her superior.

This is a crucial step in that a few important questions like what to delegate? When to delegate? Whom to delegate? And how to delegate are answered. The effectiveness of delegation depends on how clearly these questions are answered. First of all, the manager has to decide the tasks to be delegated to the subordinates. For this, he must be able to distinguish between the routine and non-routine tasks. The subordinate can perform routine and single tasks, while the manager must perform the non-routine and very important tasks.