The temperature in the training room – 4th Quarter 2017

As one of the largest ILM-Approved Training Centres in the UK, Impellus delivers leadership and management open courses to more than 250 delegates a month. We seek feedback from each delegate on the course content and trainer’s delivery, as well as the venue, to ensure our customer service levels remain high.

Our feedback form also asks for the delegate’s opinion on their work situation. By analysing these forms regularly, we have valuable insight as to how senior managers and managers are feeling across the country.

Managers attending training rises, but management optimism continues to fall

The key indicators from delegates attending our open courses in the last quarter of 2017 are as follows:

  • Managers attending training has seen an uplift with the number of delegates attending Impellus’ leadership and management open courses rising by 13% year on year
  • The number of organisations training new and recently appointed managers is unchanged year on year – with 70% of all delegates having been in their role three years or less
  • However, there was a noticeable increase in the percentage of delegates experiencing our courses who were longer-serving managers. In the last quarter of 2017, 18% of all delegates had been in their role for ten years or more – up from 8% for the same period in 2016
  • Ninety-two per cent of delegates felt that ‘training like this improves my performance enormously or measurably so’ – which is on a par with the same quarter of 2016.

Management optimism has fallen compared with the same quarter last year. The chart below shows the delegates’ responses to the statement: In my opinion, things for me at work are generally better/ the same/ worse than at this time last year. Sixty-two per cent of all delegates feel that things are generally better for them than a year ago compared with 66% in the last quarter of 2016. Eight per cent feel things are worse in comparison to 6% last year.

Delving deeper we see from the graph below that management confidence experienced a bit of a roller coaster ride last year. It started the year with a slight dip but recovered and hovered around the 70% mark for first half of the year. It then tumbled to approx. 60% but showed signs of recovering to 68% in December. However, the percentage of delegates feeling that things at work are generally worse for them also rose to its highest level in 18 months to 12% in the same month. The pressure of a very busy pre-Christmas season, as well as fewer working days in December than the rest of the year in which to achieve targets may impact the optimism of managers at this time. Alternatively, it may be that when looking back on the last 12 months, they feel that their situation has not improved. In either case, it is a worrying sign – so it will be interesting to compare with the results for the first quarter of 2018 when these are available.

To see our recommendations on how to lead when management optimism drops, read our recent article published by TrainingZone.