With shares in leading corporate training business Mind Gym down sharply, Lex (“Workplace training: course anglers”, Lex, October 16) argues that it’s now hard to see the value in companies investing in management training. Yet, the reality is that UK workplaces are now rife with “accidental managers” — leaders with serious responsibility but without the training and experience needed to succeed.
Managers without any training are more likely to see staff quit, see productivity drop, and be behind declining organisational performance. While qualified managers are more likely to see the opposite effect, with staff staying for longer, and organisations seeing an average 23 per cent increase in organisational performance and a 32 per cent increase in people performance, according to a report by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Historically, the UK has underinvested in training its managers and leaders. In partnership with YouGov, a new report from my organisation — the Chartered Management Institute — finds that 82 per cent of British workers entering management positions have not had any formal management and leadership training, and that these unskilled bosses are seriously impacting their companies and their teams.
While we appear to want our accountants to be qualified and our cyber security experts to be appropriately trained, we don’t have the same ambition for those leading day-to-day operations and big teams, our managerial class.
If the UK is to fix its lagging growth and productivity problem, companies need to invest in their management and leadership.
Anthony Painter
Policy Director, Chartered Management Institute, London WC2, UK
