Government gives green light to new management apprenticeships

02 June 2016 -

The schemes are expected to create more than 30,000 professionally trained managers in their first year

Matt Scott

Government approval for two new management and leadership trailblazer apprenticeships will give employers a greater choice of schemes to invest in developing its established and next generation of managers.

The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) gave the go-ahead for the new apprenticeships, which cover professional qualifications aimed at new team leader and operations manager roles.

According to UKCES data, nearly 200,000 new management roles need to be filled every year, but CMI research has found that seven in 10 employers fail to train their first-time managers.

BIS data has revealed that poor management and leadership costs the UK economy over £19bn a year through lower productivity.

The new apprenticeships are being heralded as one of the missing pieces to this productivity puzzle, and are expected to create more than 30,000 new managers in the first year.

CMI director of strategy Petra Wilton said the launch was good news for employers looking to make the most of their training opportunities.

“Employers will now have more options to use the forthcoming Apprenticeship Levy funding to invest in professional management development to really drive up productivity,” she said. “The suite of options means that employers can create accredited apprenticeship programmes to develop their next generation of managers, covering both school leavers and existing staff, through to Chartered Manager level.

“And there is no need to wait until April, as the Government will fund up to two-thirds of the costs under the current trailblazer funding.”

The schemes were developed by a group of 30 employers led by Serco and Civil Service Learning, and supported by CMI.

They add to the Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship, which was launched in November 2015, providing a progression route for employers to invest in managers at all levels.

Serco director of skills Melanie Nicolson said the new apprenticeships would help improve the management and leadership in UK businesses, something that is vital for their ongoing success.

“Our team leaders and operations managers are fundamental to our business; we rely on them to motivate our workforce to deliver essential public services for our customers,” she said. “That’s why we wanted to help develop these new qualifications, which will enable us to upskill both existing and future managers.

“As a registered training provider, we already have plans in place to start offering these to employees very soon and will certainly be investing our 2017/18 levy funding into helping even more people hone their management skills.”

To find out more about team leader, operations manager and Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeships, visit: www.managers.org.uk/apprenticeships