Encouraging autonomy within your team with Charlie
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Time off requests, questions about policies, and new hire onboarding — it all comes to you. And when you’re already busy, you can quickly become a bottleneck.
The more time you spend managing holiday requests or onboarding paperwork, the less time you have for leading your team, growing the business, or making strategic decisions.
And as your team grows, the problem compounds — unless you have the right tools in place.
Why autonomy and delegation are essential when you run a business
Founders and small business owners often feel compelled to get involved in every decision that gets made. It’s understandable, but this way of working can seriously slow down your business and stop your team members working at their full potential.
Through delegation and encouraging autonomy instead, you can:
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Reduce bottlenecks and speed up decision-making: Teams can move fast and take action, without waiting for approvals.
- Build trust: Team members feel empowered and trusted to work autonomously, leading to better employee retention rates and a stronger company culture.
- Free up leaders’ time for strategic work: Take time back to focus on big-picture goals and strategy, instead of HR admin.
- Empower employees to take ownership: Let team members make their own decisions, and promote accountability and growth.
- Improve employee engagement: People feel more motivated when they’re trusted to manage themselves.
- Encourage innovation: Employees can work on their problem-solving and innovation skills, leading to a growth mindset.
- Enable scaling: You can’t be involved in every decision as you grow, and taking action now means you’re ready to scale when the time comes.
Delegating might mean letting go of control or taking a step back from work you’ve become used to, but it’s essential if you want your business to grow and succeed.
How delegation can lead to greater success
Whether you’re the CEO, ops manager, or HR manager, you want the business to succeed. Giving your employees autonomy is the route forward, and HR is the perfect place to start.
Here are some scenarios where delegation can make a real difference to the way you work.
The busy CEO
Nora is CEO of a small accountancy practice. She wants to be working towards this year’s strategic goals and networking with influential partners, but instead she’s stuck dealing with holiday requests and questions about flexible working. It’s time to make a change.
One of the company’s admin team members, Stephen, has shown an interest in taking on more responsibility. Nora sees this as the ideal time to pass the work on to Stephen. With some initial training and the right HR software, he can do a far better job at managing HR, and he’ll also get the chance to grow and shape his own role.
The HR manager lost in admin work
Rohan has been the HR manager at a small creative agency for a year, but over time his work has shifted from strategy to tackling never-ending HR admin. He wants to be able to prioritise culture initiatives, employee wellbeing programs, and employee engagement — not fielding questions about how many days’ leave someone has left.
What Rohan needs is a HR platform like Charlie, which can do the heavy lifting and take care of repetitive admin tasks. With automation and self-service access for employees, Rohan can take back more time to work on strategy or more specialist HR tasks.
The overwhelmed manager
Astrid is a marketing team leader that spends more time than they’d like on chasing for updates and handling HR queries. Overseeing the team’s goals and leave calendars is frustrating, as information is stored on different systems. They want to be able to check in and make sure things are running smoothly, then get on with their own workload.
If Astrid’s company invests in a tool like Charlie, they’ll be able to free up valuable time and energy. Instead of searching through different tools, spreadsheets, and email chains for essential information, everything is stored within Charlie — with a clear and simple dashboard to match.
Check out how teams like yours win with Charlie
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8 Ways that Charlie can help you achieve autonomy
Employee autonomy is the way forward, but how do you get there? Here’s how you can use Charlie to delegate HR tasks and promote autonomy in a practical way.
1. Self-service time off requests and approvals
Many small businesses rely on spoken or email requests for time off, which can get confusing and create unnecessary admin work. A self-service system promotes autonomy and simplifies the task for everyone involved.
Requesting time off and handling approvals is easy with Charlie. Team members can submit requests through their dashboard in a few clicks. Managers can see if there are any clashes, then approve or deny requests.
2. Access to personal documents and policies
When you’re the person in charge of HR, it also becomes your job to field questions about policies, documents, and where to find them. With the right platform, all these documents are easy for staff to find whenever they need them.
Upload and store documents within Charlie for easy access at any time. Manage permissions and access controls. Attach documents to user profiles so they’re unmissable.
3. Clear visibility into time off balances and company holidays
Older or manual HR systems make it hard for employees to know how much annual leave they have left, leading to back-and-forth emails and manual calculations. Charlie takes care of all this for you.
There’s no need for manual calculations, as everything is handled by the system. Team members and managers can see at a glance what their leave balances are, and make more informed decisions as a result.
4. Automated onboarding journeys
Onboarding a new hire should be exciting, but the moment is often dampened by complicated paperwork and manual processes. Charlie allows you to simplify the experience with effective workflows and less intensive involvement.
Create and customise your onboarding workflow, then let it run when you onboard a new hire. Encourage employees to submit their own information and documentation, without HR needing to oversee or chase every step. Stay involved with intentional welcomes and goal-setting, instead of HR paperwork.
5. Self-managed performance reviews
Performance management can require a lot of organisation, especially if you’re scheduling reviews for a large number of people. With Charlie you can automate aspects and let team members take an active role.
Set a review frequency and automatically send out feedback requests, deadlines, and reminders. Employees can submit their own feedback and answer questions, including 360-degree feedback. Team members can see their growth and development plans and track goal progress.
6. Feedback and pulse surveys
Successful teams tackle issues proactively and consider ideas as they come in. Instead of waiting for 1:1 meetings, team members can use Charlie to share feedback when it’s most relevant to them.
Schedule regular pulse surveys to understand employee happiness and motivation every week or month. Monitor changes in survey results over time. Create and send feedback surveys without using a third-party survey tool.
7. Reduced admin for managers
Manual or outdated HR systems create a lot of unnecessary work for managers and team leaders. With less HR admin to take care of, managers can free up their time to coach and support their teams instead.
Automate repetitive tasks and send automatic reminders to cut down on time spent chasing for information. Empower team members to submit their own requests and find information. Managers can monitor progress and take action when necessary from a clear, simple dashboard.
8. Improved employee confidence
A traditional HR model locks everything behind closed doors, so employees find it hard to understand policies, make requests, and build trust. Switching to Charlie gives your team members more visibility, control, and confidence over their experience at work.
Give team members easy access to everything they need, including an employee directory, policies, documents, leave balances, and team calendars. Employees can make smarter, more empowered decisions, without having to ask for information.
Free some time for a demo now, win extra time for your business tomorrow
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Oversee without micromanaging
We want you to be able to step back from routine HR admin with confidence, which is why account owners and super admins have top-level access and an overview of everything.
Stay in-the-know with features like:
Team member profile overviews
- See personal details, employment information, time off, documents, and goals.
Payroll access
- View payroll information like salaries and personal details.
Onboarding and offboarding overview
- Get access to key details like start date, leaving date, and pro-rated holiday balances.
Time-off management
- Book time off for themselves or any other team member.
Performance review dashboard
- See progress across the company and the details of every performance review.
Document management
- Upload, change, and share company documents. View all documents, including those stored on user profiles.
Permission management
- Customise settings for team members to allow access depending on their role and responsibilities.
Reports
- View all reports across the company, and create and share your own reports.
Settings and customisation
- Change settings and customise the platform to match your brand, culture, and goals.
Announcements and notifications
- Share announcements, decide whether to display birthdays and work anniversaries, and customise notification settings.
With all these management and reporting features, you can feel secure that tasks are being handled without having to micromanage or chase for updates.
More reasons to trust Charlie for HR delegation
Charlie’s self-service features make HR more accessible for everyone, saving you time and allowing you to focus your attention on growth. But it’s more than just smart features that makes autonomy possible.
Other benefits of choosing Charlie include:
- All your HR processes and data in one intuitive, self-service platform
- Ready-to-go templates and workflows
- Smart reminders and nudges
- Real-time access to information
- No more barriers or gatekeeping
- Flexibility to work with different team structures and locations
- Scales with your business growth
With a combination of clever features, automation, and systems designed for autonomy, Charlie makes delegation seamless. Book a demo with one of our experts to see it in action.
Time for a demo today, less time on HR tomorrow
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What it looks like when a CEO hands over HR with Charlie
When you find the right software, delegating HR tasks becomes effortless. That’s what happened for London Nootropics.
HR was previously handled by the founder, but their research for a better system led them to Charlie. After Sophie, the Customer Happiness Manager, joined, HR became part of their role — and they used Charlie to organise and simplify everything.
Instead of managing time off through Slack and email chains, team members could submit requests through Charlie and Sophie could approve them in one click. And instead of having to remember everyone’s birthday, Sophie now receives prompts automatically so she never misses a moment to celebrate.
Sophie Hanman, Customer Happiness Manager at London Nootropics
“It’s so important not to miss milestones in an employee’s journey – just a few words of acknowledgement can make a massive difference for someone to feel valued and recognised.”
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Delegate with confidence
You can’t be involved in every decision as your business grows, and HR is one of the best places to start taking a step back. By delegating everyday tasks and empowering employees with easy access to what they need, you can shift your focus from admin to strategy.
Creating autonomy in your business is easier with the right software. Book a demo with our expert team to find out how Charlie has all the features, settings, and visibility you need to delegate your HR tasks with confidence.
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Written by:
Jenny Tattum
Jenny is a Senior Product Manager at CharlieHR. She has years of experience with product planning and development, and user research too – she put together this guide by collecting data and information on competitors so we could improve our product and tailor it to small business owners.
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FAQs for encouraging autonomy within your team
We’re here to help with all your questions about delegating HR tasks to your team members.
Yes — Charlie is a great choice whether you’re a CEO, founder, HR manager, ops manager, or office manager. It’s easy to use, even if you’re not a HR expert.
You can get started with Charlie in minutes. Use the free trial to explore the platform, then complete the signup process when you’re ready. There’s no complicated migration process, and it’s easy to import existing data into the system.
Charlie’s pricing is affordable and scales as you grow. Pricing starts at just £20 per month.
You can use roles and permissions within Charlie to give team members different access levels and abilities. See our detailed guide on roles and permissions for more information.
Yes! Once you’ve set your permission levels for employees, they’ll only have access to the information and areas you’ve assigned them to.
It’s easy to change a mistake — employees can cancel their existing request and make a new one.
Absolutely! Charlie provides a strong foundation for small businesses that want a more effective way to manage HR, but it’s also designed to scale alongside you. As your business grows, you might be interested in our add-ons like Charlie Recruit or Charlie Advice.
We’re happy to help. We can help you put together a personalised business case and demonstrate the value that Charlie would bring to your business. Book a demo with us to get started.
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