For decades, providing formal management and leadership qualifications — diplomas, NVQs and professional certifications — was seen as the gold standard by employers for developing capable leaders.
But in today’s fast-changing business environment, many employers are rethinking that assumption.
Rather than funnel managers into time-intensive, theoretical qualifications, organisations are increasingly investing in Continuous Professional Development (CPD) — bite-sized, practical, timely and tailored learning designed to meet real workplace needs. Meeting the needs of the organisation and giving managers the tools to meet their own career aspirations.
For clarity Impellus is a proud ILM Training Centre so we deliver qualifications as well as CPD programmes in management and leadership. We’ve delivered thousands of ILM qualifications to managers over fifteen years and they provide clear value to managers and employers.
This article doesn’t dismiss that value or their place in the learning portfolio. It’s written to provide an incite into trends in the L&D market over the last two years which our evidenced by client demand and sales mix.
- Formal qualifications can exhaust and overwhelm managers
Management qualifications, by their nature, tend to be structured around academic frameworks. They involve significant study time, formal assessments and portfolios of evidence that can stretch over months or even years. While this works for professions where formal knowledge is critical (e.g., medicine or engineering), business leadership is inherently applied and contextual.
Many managers struggle to balance demanding roles with the workload required to complete formal qualifications often leading to stress, burnout or delayed completions.
This pressure undermines the very purpose of learning: instead of enhancing performance, it becomes an additional burden.
- Qualifications are often too academic and not vocational enough
Traditional qualifications are designed with internal academic benchmarks in mind. That can make them too theoretical and not immediately applicable to the pressing issues managers face. Academic syllabuses might cover leadership theory or organisational behaviour in depth, but those topics don’t always translate easily into the real challenges of managing people, performance and projects day-to-day.
For many business leaders, practical skill application outweighs theoretical insight. Employers increasingly want to see managers who can do — navigate conflict, coach a struggling team member, influence without authority — rather than managers who have passed assessments on organisational theory.
This has contributed to a broader trend away from credentialism — an excessive reliance on formal qualifications — and toward skill-based learning that prioritises capability. (Wikipedia)
- Qualifications are expensive and inefficient for employers
Formal qualifications often come with significant costs — registrations, support and marking — which weigh against return on investment (ROI) especially when considering the points above.
In contrast, CPD allows learning to be broken down into shorter, flexible activities aligned with strategic needs, where learning is integrated into workflow rather than separated from it.
- Qualifications are often gained by employees who plan to leave
Some managers see obtaining a qualification as an easier route to winning a more senior role elsewhere rather than proving they can apply skills and achieve that promotion with their current employer.
When an employee invests time in a long qualification, they may do so not because their organisation needs it, but because they want a ticket to the next opportunity.
That means employers may end up subsidising learning that benefits the individual’s career mobility more than it strengthens the organisation.
Why employers – and their finance directors – are championing CPD
In response to these limitations, many organisations are turning to CPD as the preferred model for management development.
Here’s why:
- CPD delivers ‘at the right time’ learning
It’s a shift in mindset. CPD treats learning as a continuous, practical, measurable and adaptive process rather than a one-time academic milestone. Managers get exactly the right learning at the right time.
This also provides the benefits of a change in learning culture, a reduction in lumpy expenditure and more certainty that the expenditure will provide a return. Meaning…
- CPD is cost-effective and ROI-driven
Because CPD is modular and tightly aligned to business priorities, organisations can invest more intentionally — putting time and budget where it delivers measurable performance improvement. Research shows that companies with structured learning cultures — rooted in continuous development — enjoy higher productivity and innovation too.
As many finance directors will suggest, this focus on measurable return contrasts with qualifications, where the benefits can be indirect, long-term and hard to track.
- CPD boosts engagement and retention
CPD signals to employees that their development matters and that learning is part of life at work — not something that’s done “in addition to” the job. LinkedIn research shows that employees are more likely to stay with employers who invest in ongoing learning opportunities. They feel valued, capable and confident in their roles.
This is no different for managers.
Talent seeks out growth so recruitment, engagement and retention are all improved. When that’s true of a management team its easy to see how that impacts staff.
- CPD helps build a learning organisation
Finally, CPD encourages organisations to think of development as a continuous ecosystem rather than a series of checkpoints. It promotes lifelong learning, adaptability and relevance in an era where business conditions change rapidly. (Wikipedia)
Conclusion: learning that works for today’s leaders
In an era of rapid business change, the old model — where management capability is proven by long, academic qualifications — is losing ground to a more agile, practical approach.
Employers are discovering that:
- Qualifications can exhaust managers and skew towards academic theory rather than practical skills;
- They are expensive, time-consuming and sometimes more valuable to the employee’s next employer than their current one; and
- They deliver slower, harder-to-measure ROI.
By treating management development as CPD which is, in its nature, ongoing, adaptive and operationally relevant, organisations can ensure their leaders get the learning they need, when they need it, and that the investment in skills translates directly into performance and organisational impact.
