The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) recently published a ‘change agenda’ report entitled “Learning and the line: the role of line managers in training, learning and development”. This April 2007 report looks at research undertaken on managers’ roles in influencing activities concerned with the training, learning and development of their staff, and themselves. The report provides a very useful summary of the emerging trends in the role played by line managers in HR, and what follows is a summary of the major findings contained in the report.
The report starts out by highlighting the importance of line managers in supporting learning and development. They quote the findings of their annual CIPD survey of learning and development professionals (CIPD 2007) which confirms increasing line manager involvement in learning and development (almost three-quarters of respondents report that line managers have taken on greater responsibility for these activities in the last two years) and indicates almost universal support for the view that line managers are important in supporting learning and development.
With this as a starting point, they examine the wide range of line management involvement in learning and development activities, including induction, providing formal training, job rotation, secondments, career development, and coaching and guidance. They draw three important conclusions from the wide range of line manager involvement:
- Not all managers are convinced that learning and development is actually part of their job, with many not taking these responsibilities seriously. (In my experience many organisations do not recognise the importance of line managers in learning and development, and consequently don’t create the necessary supportive organisational policies.)
- Some line managers use their influence on learning and development as part of their reward system, with some managers using training activities as a punishment. (How often are under-performing staff told that they are going to have to go on a training course!)
- Not all line managers are equally effective at leading and developing their staff, with many not having the appropriate HR skills to carry out their responsibilities. (In my experience, this is particularly the case with those skills that focus on longer-term staff development, such as talent nurturing, mentoring etc.)
In the next part, I will look at what conditions the authors consider necessary to support effective line management involvement in learning and development.
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