Incompetent managers will sink the government’s NEETs plan
Scrapping all funding for management apprenticeships is a big mistake, says Petra Wilton
If Pat McFadden wants more young people not in education, employment or training (known as NEETs) to succeed in work, this week’s decision to essentially wipe out all funding for management apprenticeships, which train the managers who hire, support and coach them in their first months, is a very strange place to start.
Because while ministers this week have rightly focused on the scale of the NEETs crisis, with close to a million young people out of work or education, they have at the same time taken one of the most far-reaching decisions on skills in years. The removal of funding for core leadership and management apprenticeships amounts to the largest withdrawal of public support for management training in a generation, stripping out established routes used by thousands of employers to develop the people responsible for running teams, supporting staff and making workplaces function day to day.
Lack of management training is already holding the UK economy back, it shows up every day in workplaces across the country, where around 82 per cent of managers have never received formal training, and one in three workers say they have left a job because of a bad boss.
That gap becomes more acute, not less, when trying to bring NEETs back into the workforce, many of whom are navigating low confidence, disrupted education or mental health challenges, and for whom the first few weeks in a job can determine whether they stay or fall out again.
In practice, that experience is shaped less by policy and more by people. A trained manager is more likely to ease someone in gradually, set clear expectations, check in regularly and coach through mistakes, building confidence over time. An untrained manager, often promoted without preparation, may struggle to structure early conversations, avoid difficult one-to-ones, or misread inexperience as a lack of effort. For someone already on the edge of the labour market, that difference is decisive.
It is therefore no surprise that employers have reacted with frustration. More than 5,000 have already backed calls to protect these programmes, including companies such as Asda, Amazon, Capita, Jet2.com, the Co-op and Lloyds Bank, all of whom rely on management apprenticeships as a core route for developing the people responsible for leading teams and supporting new entrants into the workforce.
James Reed, chief executive of the Reed Group, has warned that “cutting management training at a time when it should be expanded will short-change our economy”. At Asda, chief people officer James Goodman said the plans would “cut off proven progression routes”, while the Co-op’s Claire Costello warned they would “weaken the UK’s leadership pipeline”.
There is also a broader economic argument that goes beyond individual workplaces. John Van Reenen, the economist and former chair of the Chancellor’s Council of Economic Advisers, has suggested that as much as 45 per cent of the UK’s productivity gap with the United States may be linked to differences in management capability. In that context, removing one of the few large-scale, practical routes for improving management quality risks weakening a key driver of economic performance at the very moment it needs strengthening.
The impact is not confined to the private sector. Millions of pounds are invested through these programmes in the people who run public services day to day, with nearly half of management apprenticeships delivered in organisations such as the NHS and departments like the DWP.
These programmes are used to train ward managers, team leaders and operational supervisors, the people responsible for running services, managing staff and delivering for the public day to day. Removing that training does not remove the need for better management in public services, it simply makes it harder to achieve at a time when those services are already under pressure to do more with less.
The government’s argument is that too much of the apprenticeship budget has been used for existing workers rather than new entrants, and that funding should be refocused towards younger people. That is a legitimate aim. But removing the programmes that train managers risks weakening the very environments those young people are being asked to enter.
A job is not just a vacancy filled, it is an experience that either builds confidence or erodes it. For someone stepping into work for the first time or returning after a period out, the difference between the two outcomes often comes down to whether their manager knows how to properly support them.
If the goal is to help NEETs not just get jobs but keep them, progress and build careers, then management capability is not a side issue, it is what determines whether this works or fails.
You cannot fix a broken bridge into work by removing the people who help others cross it. That is not reform, it is self-sabotage.
Petra Wilton is director of policy and external affairs at the Chartered Management Institute