Everyone in the skills sector is rooting for the government’s youth guarantee. Tackling the NEETs crisis isn’t just a moral goal; it’s an economic necessity.
But a rush to create opportunities for young people will fail if we don’t have the managers to support them. To make this work, we need to address three uncomfortable truths.
1. The line manager as the lynchpin
The success of the youth guarantee won’t happen in Whitehall. It will happen on the shop floor, in the office and on site. Line managers are the lynchpins.
To fail to manage new hires risks souring a young person’s relationship with work before it’s really begun. All too often a talented young person loses confidence and walks away because their first boss didn’t know how to manage them.
If we want young people to stay in the workforce we have to train those who lead them.
2. Scaling up the accidental manager
Critics often ask: If management apprenticeships are so great, why does the UK still lag in productivity? The answer is scale.
There are roughly 8.2 million managers in the UK. Yet, a staggering 82 per cent of them are ‘accidental managers’ – promoted because they were good at their technical job, but not given formal training on how to lead people.
We aren’t failing because management training doesn’t work; we’re failing because we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of this deficit.
3. Business needs must come first
We cannot squander this moment by ignoring what employers actually require. While it’s right that we focus on industrial strategy sector priorities and ‘critical sectors’ such as health and construction, it shouldn’t come at the expense of management capability elsewhere.
The evidence for protecting management training is not anecdotal. Analysis led by chancellor Rachel Reeves’ economic adviser John Van Reenen found that 50 per cent of the UK’s productivity gap with the US is linked to management capability.
Closer to home, the latest Skills England assessment deemed management a critical occupation – accounting for 25 per cent of all roles in “critical demand”. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development echoes that view, linking the UK’s gap in managerial practices to lower productivity levels.
Independent research by Oxford Economics calculated that £120 million was added to GDP in 12 months (2023-24) by those completing management apprenticeships.
Beyond economic returns are the people undertaking these courses. Management apprentices gain the soft skills that are often the most challenging to master – team dynamics, handling difficult conversations and giving constructive feedback.
Learners overwhelmingly report that they feel more confident and competent, which allows them to take on additional responsibilities. Apprenticeships also drive social mobility, with around 60 per cent of learners coming from the UK’s most deprived areas, while 59 per cent of all apprentices are women.
The government cannot – and should not – be expected to fund it all. Business must step up and invest in its own people. However, the government sets the direction of travel.
This is why CMI has launched a new petition to the government. We are calling on ministers to heed the employers’ voice and ensure that as they streamline funding, they follow the evidence and protect the programmes that turn “accidental managers” into professional leaders.
Employers need a “both/and” approach. They want the agility of new short courses such as managing AI and short-term business priorities. But they also need the deep, behavioural transformation that a full apprenticeship provides.
Management provision simply cannot be sidelined. If we want to give young people the future they deserve, we have to give them managers who are trained to lead.
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