The Research
The project will provide a detailed evaluation of the impact of Skilled Managers on engagement and productivity. The research will span a number of organisations in the private and public sectors and use a 'gold standard' group randomised control design.
There is growing evidence that line managers lack the skills needed to manage people effectively and to resolve difficult personnel issues.
Training programmes designed to increase core people management skills are one way of securing higher levels of employee engagement and improved productivity.
Unfortunately, there has been no robust academic research in this area, making it difficult to build a persuasive business case for investing in training line managers in key conflict management skills.
The Skilled Managers project aims to tackle this evidence deficit.
Understanding our research process
01 Identify and group managers
You identify the managers taking part in the research. We work with you to divide these into groups. These are then randomly assigned as 'treatment' and 'control'.
02 Benchmark engagement and performance
We gather available benchmark data relating to reports of all managers in the research. This could include engagement, absence, turnover and other performance measures you already collect. If you don't have engagement data we will provide a pulse survey.
03 Treatment group begin training
The 'treatment' group of managers begin the training and complete this over a 2-4 week period. On completion of training managers get free access to our Managerial Toolkit for 12 months for continued development.
after 4-6 months...
04 Data analysis & report
After 3 months we gather data and analyse the impacts of the intervention and a summary report will be sent to your organisation.
05 Treatment group begin training
The control group of managers are given access to the training, either as part of the research or our commercial offer.
after another 4-6 months...
06 Final data analysis
We will take final measures of impact 4-6 months after the control group start their training.
07 Receive detailed report of findings
We provide your organisation with a detailed report of our findings.
Read more about the research behind the project.
There is growing evidence that line managers lack the skills needed to manage people effectively and to identify, address and resolve difficult personnel issues. Therefore, training programmes designed to increase their basic people management skills, including the capacity to deal with conflict, could be one way of securing higher levels of employee engagement and improved productivity. Unfortunately, there has been no robust quantitative academic research in this area, making it difficult to build a persuasive business case for investment in conflict management competences.
This project will provide a detailed evaluation of the impact on engagement and productivity arising from training managers in conflict and other core competencies that might foster improved working relationships. The workplace trial will span a number of organisations in the private and public sectors and use a 'gold standard' group randomised control design.
We will track the impact of the training intervention over several months to assess the short- and long-term impacts of the training intervention on organizations that take part of the study. We aim to provide evidence based knowledge and a suite of training tools which can be replicated in a range of organisational contexts.
Poor management and low productivity
There is a growing body of evidence that poor management is one of the main causes of low productivity. The UK government's Industrial Strategy noted that our managers are on average less proficient than many competitors and it has been argued that improving basic managerial competences is therefore crucial if we are to solve the 'productivity puzzle'.
The challenges facing line managers are becoming increasingly complex
Alongside the contemporary emphasis on more robust approaches to the management of performance, the COVID-19 pandemic has added the challenges of managing remotely and of acute job insecurity to the mix in many work settings, making it more likely that managers will find themselves having to have 'difficult conversations' and potentially dealing with conflict. Workplace conflict is not only widespread but arguably inhibits workplace productivity by tying up valuable organisational resources.
A CIPD survey found that over one-third of respondents had recent experience of conflict at work, and it has been estimated that employees spend an average of 1.8 hours a week dealing with conflict; an annual loss of 370 million days. At the same time, the way managers handle conflict could have a significant impact on organisational performance by influencing levels of engagement: employees are more likely to be engaged if they feel that they are treated fairly and involved in decisions that affect them.
