Management training is a corporate responsibility issueA survey by the Chartered Institute of Management has found that nearly half of employees have quit a job due to a poor manager. Many people said they’d take a cut in pay rather than have a bad manager. Before we get too upset about the people putting up with poor managers it seems the managers aren’t having much fun either. 68% say they fell into the role without planning to be a manager and many of them didn’t want the responsibility. How often do we come across this? People who get promoted because they have a high level of functional skill (think of a great sales person). Or are conveniently available when the role needs to be filled but aren’t necessarily naturally tuned into the job of being a manager. It is utterly unreasonable to expect someone to make the switch from being part of the functional team to managing it without a huge amount of support. It is a different skill set. It is also wrong to allow employees to be poorly managed. Being in either of these situations causes unnecessary stress and creates all kinds of risk for the organisation. We wouldn’t allow a machine operator get to work without ensuring they had the required skills. Management training is not a nice-to-do extra, it’s an absolute must do. 2 Comments1. Mallen Baker | 2009-11-19 09:26 PM Hi Gráinne, This is absolutely key. It is such a nuts-and-bolts issue, companies rarely address it when it comes time to talk about their social responsibility in their reports. But I've personally come across several that managed to turn the corner on staff dissatisfaction by beefing up management training. Interestingly, the staff not only felt less stressed and better managed in these companies after they had put the effort into management skills, they also perceived the company to be more socially responsible generally. The 'halo effect' in action, I guess. 2. Gráinne Madden | 2009-11-19 10:04 PM Yes Mallen, it can have really powerful effects. One difficulty is the time it can take for the halo effect to become apparent which in turn makes it difficult for HR or the training dept. to justify. Personally I regard training metrics and especially management training metrics as a must in CR reporting. Thanks for your input. Add a CommentYour comment will appear once it has been approved. |