Raising the bar
The Chartered Management Institute has concerns with the competency levels in UK plc management, it was reported recently. And, according to Ruth Spellman the Institute’s chief executive, the situation is getting worse. The Leitch report on workforce skills detailed that 41 per cent of UK managers have less than five good GCSEs and only 20 per cent have any qualifications at all.
So, at a time when many graduate entry schemes are closing down, we need to do more to encourage and provide an acceptable framework for our university leavers to build the confidence and capability to lead a thriving UK plc workplace.
These management skills are essential for the UK to compete on a global level. In this issue’s ‘Talent trends’ (page 7), Penny de Valk discusses the highly effective management culture emerging from China and the East. A study has revealed that not only are China’s managers better educated, they also receive more in-house training.
There are organisations out there making training a priority. In our profile (page 8), Phil Rogers, IKEA’s HR development manager, talks about how IKEA have recently embarked on an incredibly ambitious in-house training programme for their managers. The project involved using a wealth of knowledge and experience from within the business to train all 500 of their managers to the same competency level.
To be able to raise the competencies and capabilities of your management team, organisations need also to be able to benchmark the current strength of their human capital. Simon Brittain (page 22) discusses how talent benchmarking can help organisations add objectivity into their succession decision making, not just for those already ensconced in a leadership programme but to help build a development plan for those entering the business at graduate level.
It is this development which is going to drive our technologically savvy Generation Y, hungry for a diverse range of experience and opportunity (cover story, page 12). Even the more established organisations are having to grapple with the cold realisation that despite reward and enticement, this generation’s priorities are different – mobility is more important and loyalty less so than in previous generations.
Spellman suggests a large-scale mentoring programme for university leavers, to help them them move through the insecure but highly influential middle-management years. That, with a decent dose of people investment, might just help to raise the bar and make the UK a leading contender in organisational performance – globally.
Katie Pattullo
Editor
