News on 08 December 2000
Research carried out by the Institute of Management (IM)
for ‘Achieving Management Excellence’ shows that consistent
training improves a company’s turnover. Smaller companies, with less
than 100 employees, have increased formal training by 25% in only four
years and 60% of these are now reporting financial benefits.
37% of organisations have an explicit training policy, a significant improvement
from only 8% in a similar study in 1996 ‘A Portrait of Management
Development’ and 25% of small businesses now have a dedicated budget
to help achieve the potential of their managers.
Informal training has risen in popularity with a manager spending on average
8.5 days on activities such as job rotating, job shadowing and being coached
and mentored. 42% of small companies surveyed preferred informal training
and more than two thirds had some formal training in the past year, favouring
external seminars or in-company training.
Two thirds of small businesses hold staff appraisals compared to three
quarters in larger companies and training needs are discussed in almost
all cases. Over 70% of companies are committed to at least one national
programme, with NVQ programmes being the most popular among managers.
