Give your shop manager decision limits they can actually use

Start with decisions that keep coming back

For a week, collect the questions your manager asks for permission to answer. Separate requests that need your judgement from requests that merely need a consistent rule. Include examples from the manager's perspective: they may have received different answers from you and a co-owner.

Discuss the list together. HSE's role guidance stresses clarity and avoiding conflicting responsibilities. If you expect a manager to protect service standards while denying every staffing or spending decision, the role contains a conflict that a longer checklist cannot remove.

Further reading: HSE: Management Standards — Role

Create three levels of authority

Use 'decide and record', 'recommend for approval' and 'stop and get help'. Apply these to named situations rather than vague descriptions such as small issues or reasonable spending. Your business chooses the amounts and boundaries; there is no universal safe monetary threshold.

The table below is an illustrative starting point. A decision can be low-cost and still sensitive: changing a food ingredient, promising a delivery date or sharing a customer's details may carry consequences beyond the amount involved.

Give access and capacity as well as permission

A manager cannot carry out an authorised refund without the correct till permissions, or arrange approved cover without knowing who is available and trained. Check the practical route for each decision. Use appropriate individual access where possible, not shared owner credentials.

Review workload at the same time. Delegating purchasing, complaints and supervision on top of an already full counter shift may require reducing other duties or adding support. Agree the role, pay and working arrangements through your normal employment process rather than quietly expanding expectations.

Practise the awkward edge cases

Work through two or three scenarios before you disappear from the shop. Ask what the manager would do when the amount is just above their limit, the supplier is unfamiliar or two problems arrive together. Listen for missing information, not just the answer you expected.

For example, permission to spend £40 on essential consumables could mean £40 per incident, per day or per week. Those are different rules. Specify whether several related purchases share one limit, and who approves an exception if you are unavailable.

Decision:
Who may make it:
Financial or operational boundary:
Information to check first:
Where the decision is recorded:
Exceptions and backup approver:
Review date:

Back decisions made within the agreement

Review outcomes without retrospectively changing the rules. If the manager followed the agreed boundary but you would have chosen differently, explain what should change next time. Reversing every reasonable decision teaches people that permission was only theoretical.

Keep the table short enough to find during service. Review it when suppliers, roles or your service change, and remove obsolete copies. Look for fewer avoidable approval requests alongside sound decisions; a drop in questions alone could also mean people have stopped reporting problems.