Managers who don’t get management training are 36 percent more likely to leave their current job.
According to Digits, an online learning platform, one in four managers and supervisors have never been trained for the role.
The poll of more than 1,000 adults also found men get more regular training than women, with the figures at 38 percent compared to 32 percent.
The gender divide also relates to workload; 54 percent of women say their workload wasn’t reduced when they first became a manager – compared to 49 percent of men.
Untrained managers less happy
Notably, one in seven managers said they were managing big teams (of 10 people or more) with no management training at all.
Meanwhile, untrained managers are also more likely to change employers and worse, they are less likely to be happy at work.
Even so, Digit’s poll found half of untrained managers say they either like or love their current job.
But, of those managers who do get regular management training – 77 percent said they either liked or loved what they were doing.
Managers need to feel not think
According to Harvard Business Review, managerial tasks are likely to be replaced by technology by 2024.
Managers will no longer be needed to manage workflows after this, so the role will change.
Harvard suggests it will then be “less important to see what employees are doing and more important to understand how they feel.”
In a 2021 Gartner survey of almost 5,000 employees across the world, 85 percent of HR leaders said empathy has become more important since the pandemic.
While only 47 percent of employees said they thought their managers were prepared for a future role.
The Gartner study also found employees with empathetic managers were much more productive.
42 percent of senior managers plan to switch jobs
The Digit results, meanwhile, showed that over a third (35 percent) of all managers who started their job in 2021 are considering leaving it within the next year. While, around 40 percent of managers that started their job in 2020 or 2019 are planning to leave.
Based on the data, managers working in real estate, marketing and sales, and IT, software and telecoms, seem the most likely to be planning a job change.
Commenting on the results, Bradley Burgoyne, head of learning and development at Digits, said it highlights a worrying trend. He says companies are not investing in the very people who are meant to lead their organisations: “The events of the past 18 months have demonstrated the vital role that managers play in the success of an organisation.”
He added: “With demand for talent and pressure to perform at an all-time high, the question is: can organisations afford not to train their managers?”
Feyaza Khan has been a journalist for more than 20 years in print and broadcast. Her special interests include neurodiversity in the workplace, tech, diversity, trauma and wellbeing.
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