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Empowering Your Marketing Team: How to Allocate Work for Success and Growth

In any enterprise marketing function, a key success factor is having - and maintaining and developing - a wide range of relevant skills amongst your team.

Unlike SMEs, who may need to hire marketing generalists in order to get things done, most CMOs and Marketing Directors in large organisations are fortunate to be able to grow a team with a large enough headcount to recruit specialists in various areas.

Whether you create specialist roles by media/channel, by product, or even by target audience, it's important to get the right people in the right roles. And to make sure you get the right people working on the right things.

But not every campaign or piece of work that needs to be delivered fits nicely into the same categories that you've used to structure your team.

So how do you allocate work and why is it important to get it right?

Determining the right task for the right person is a major indicator of successful leadership. The quality of your team's output becomes reflective of individual contributions and a good team is often greater than the sum of its parts. An individual may excel in one area of expertise, while needing guidance and development in another.

If you're able to determine preemptively where to focus this support, you'll be able to reduce the likelihood of an ill-content team. This minimises any impact on the quality of your team's output and reduces the risk of high staff turnover. Availability of development opportunities has been proven to be a key factor in achieving positive employee satisfaction scores.

Optimising the unique expertise of your team members is vital. Allocation of tasks should of course be reflective of individuals' strengths, and what you've hired them to do in the first place - but a good leader should also be mindful of areas where their team members want to develop.

With marketing moving at such a fast pace, getting ahead of evolving trends and the acquisition of new skills is paramount to success. By prioritising continuous learning, marketing professionals gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing market. And whilst individuals can, and should, take responsibility for their own personal development, having support and encouragement from their employer is a huge plus point.

And learning and development doesn't always have to be in the form of training courses. Shadowing colleagues, secondments, knowledge share sessions and involving team members in projects outside their immediate areas of responsibility are all great ways to develop individuals' skills and knowledge - even if you don't have a huge training budget available.

Mutual support and accountability nurtures the fairest working environment possible and being thoughtful about how you allocate work in order to open up opportunities for everyone to learn new skills encourages team working and sharing of knowledge. And you're likely to have more motivated and engaged team members, leading to increased job satisfaction and productivity - not to mention better retention in the team and therefore a reduction in the time and effort you need to spend on recruitment, or carrying vacancies.

All of this contributes to the high-performing marketing team that every good marketing leader wants to nurture - because, of course, as a leader, you want a team behind you that delivers results!

Here are five ways in which marketing leaders can ensure they allocate work in a way that plays to their team members' strengths while promoting personal development and maintaining fairness:

Know Your Team: Understand each team member's strengths, skills, areas of interest and career goals to tailor task assignments effectively.

Skill-Based Assignments: Assign tasks based on individual strengths and expertise, optimising project outcomes and fostering a sense of competence.

Clear Goal Setting: Define task objectives that align with both the team's goals and individual development aspirations.

Regular Feedback and Individual Development Plans: Provide regular feedback and collaborate on individual development plans to monitor progress and facilitate growth.

Encourage Knowledge Sharing: Offer opportunities for team members to shadow each other, run/attend ‘lunch and learn' sessions or work on projects outside of their day-to-day remit so they can learn from colleagues.

Knowing what your team are doing is essential for any marketing leader that wants to be able to develop their team in this way. Find out more about how Q:chi can help by clicking on the link above to book a demo.