The Accidental Manager
The accidental manager is someone who has been promoted because of their technical expertise and track record but lacks the skills and experience in management.
Managers are often expected to know how to manage, simply by virtue of their promotion and new title.
Offering guidance and training
This is something that we come across in nearly every single business we engage with. Just because a member of the team is the best at what they do does not automatically make them the best person to manage the team, division, region or department. As Employers, it is our responsibility to support and nurture to ensure we provide the correct soft skills to allow managers to guide, motivate and support their team.
It is so important to work with managers to develop their skills and work with their technical ability and experience within their job role to get the best out of their team. What sometimes can be seen as underperformance by an individual manager, could actually be a lack of training and coaching to develop their managerial skills.
The role of Accidental Managers
A well-trained manager can have a true impact on your business, they can impact engagement, retention, motivation and productivity through the Employees they manage. Within Apprenticeships the number one reason learners will drop out of their Apprenticeship training programme is through lack of line manager support. By ensuring these managers have the correct training you can address this. Four out of every five managers in the UK are thought to be untrained (2.4 million bosses), largely due to the fact that only one in every five companies invests in training their managers.
One thing our Employees have done is to utilise their Apprenticeship Levy first within the middle management level. Get these guys trained up well to then be able to cascade good skills/working practices further down the line. Inevitably this has a positive knock-on effect. Employers are seeing the benefits with the longevity of Employees, happier workforce and we are currently seeing over 93% of our Team Leaders and Operations Managers achieving distinctions within their ILM qualifications.
How SR Apprenticeships can support your organisation
SR Apprenticeships are a national Apprenticeship training provider. We can work with you to design, tailor and bespoke your own unique management programme in Team Leader Level 3 (ILM), Operations Departmental Manager Level 5 (ILM) and help embed management soft skills in a wide range of other Apprenticeships training programmes.