Management training boosts workers' knowledge 'currency'

The ultimate outcome of inadequate management training is often de-motivated staff who "hold back" organisations in what is a knowledge-driven economy, it has been claimed.

Martyn Sloman, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's learning and development advisor, was responding to Deloitte's recent Entrepreneurship UK: 2008 report.

It highlighted that almost a third of UK firms consider "a shortage of quality people" to be a primary barrier to business growth.

Mr Sloman noted that modern businesses compete through the knowledge and skills of their workers and so they must facilitate opportunities to deploy these effectively, through investment in training and performance management initiatives.

"People leave bosses not organisations," he remarked.

Such bosses will not have honed their basic influencing skills and their ability to offer both learning and feedback, he continued.

"Those skills have rocketed in importance," according to Mr Sloman, who also singled out "working with others, writing short and long documents, writing presentations [and] giving instructions" as latter-day attributes all managers should strive to improve.

In its report, professional services firm Deloitte found more than a quarter of business owners plan to make training and performance management their "single biggest financial investment" over the next year.