News: Performance Management
Remember training lessons during the crunch, line managers urged
04 November 2008
Line managers should ensure they do not "forget their training" and adopt a more instinctive leadership style during the credit crunch, it has been claimed.
Penny de Valk, chief executive of the Institute of Leadership and Management, suggests pressure on managers amid the downturn will ultimately affect staff productivity if the fruits of training and development initiatives are not applied effectively.
"We know and psychologists know that when people are under pressure they revert to natural style, albeit in an amplified form, in order to survive," she remarks to Personnel Today.
Individuals' behaviour may need to be modified to enable them to manage better, she adds, concluding that "forgetting their training as a result of the economic downturn" will impact on engagement as well as productivity.
Ms de Valk's comments on the growing pressure faced by line managers follow news from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development that responsibility for staff training itself increasingly lies with such leaders and not human resources professionals.
In last month's Who Learns at Work? report, the institute revealed just under half of the 750 organisations it studied now benefit from training programmes which have been initiated by line managers.
