The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) estimates that up to 2.4 million leaders and managers in Britain are “accidental managers” with no formal management or leadership training – this equates to roughly four in every five. While these managers and leaders are technically capable, the lack of formal training in soft skills and business acumen is holding back productivity, damaging workplace motivation and ultimately reducing business growth.
Here are five things businesses can do to avoid “accidental managers”:
1. Invest in workplace learning.
This may seem obvious, but as the CMI figures suggest very few organisations are investing in formal management or leadership training. How can you expect someone to be an effective manager or leader when they haven’t been trained?
To drive the best results, and motivate your teams, learning needs to be immediately applicable in the workplace and the manger or leader’s role.
Everything a manager studies on a training programme should relate back to their own work and the objectives you’re working towards.
Bringing learning into the workplace, and ensuring managers are reflecting on their own practices, makes learning and applying new techniques a part of their role.
Our learners tell us they’re excited to apply something new they’ve learned in their role as soon as the next day and see the positive impacts these bring.
2. Make learning accessible to suit priorities.
Learning has to be flexible, and accessible from any location to fit into today’s work environment. The reality of a business releasing a manager or leader to attend a five-day training programme is limited, and the value returns are low – you cannot become a knowledgeable and skilled manager or leader in five days!
Providing online flexibility from any device, so managers and leaders can engage and learn when their time allows, brings what they learn directly to their teams and is key to ensure engagement in training programmes.
Our intuitive online platform, KBPRO®, is full of actionable MBA standard techniques and methodologies, making learning applicable and accessible in the workplace, from any device, any location and at the right time to suit business priorities.
3. Learn from other sectors.
Expand peoples’ viewpoint by learning new ways of working from peers in different sectors.
Learning groups which are limited to a single sector without a doubt deliver tangible skills and knowledge. However, they don’t encourage people to look outside of their own sector for inspiration and understand how other organisations are tackling challenges.
Through our live and online cross-sector training workshops, managers actively explore new ways of working from peers in different sectors, learn about the latest Hot Topics in business and gain essential networking skills.
Experiential learning is the most influential and long-lasting and our sessions offer a deep dive into a variety of topics including project management, leadership styles, and emotional intelligence among others.
4. Create a culture of learning and knowledge sharing in your organisation.
Businesses can begin to align objectives to training programmes to develop a learning culture, weaving a common thread throughout teams and levels, which will in turn improve talent retention, develop a thirst for learning and deliver better results.
Learning groups within organisations build camaraderie when they start and progress on training programmes together. This can then be easily funnelled back into the organisation to inspire others.
Our ethos is to Inspire Leadership at all Levels, and our programmes support organisations to develop learning cultures that do just that.
5. Fund steps 1 – 4 via the government apprenticeship levy.
External training is the best way to ensure “accidental managers” don’t restrict your organisation’s success, and mitigate the financial and retention risks associated with poor management.
Our innovative leadership and management apprenticeships are available to individuals or teams – funded via the government apprenticeship levy.
You can access these as a levy paying organisation, or as a small business by reserving funding through the governments apprenticeship service – we can also help you do this.
If you’d like to use your levy to get better results like Avis Budget Group, Manchester Airport Group, Warrington CCG, Baxi and Christie’s to name but a few, get in touch to arrange an introductory call with one of our team.