Ruth Spellman OBE - CMI

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Ruth Spellman OBE, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), speaks to ePolitix.com about the CMI's five year strategy and their upcoming report on the benefits of professional qualifications.

Question: Can you tell us about the work of the Chartered Management Institute?

Ruth Spellman: The Chartered Management Institute is the only chartered body dedicated to management and leadership. We're committed to raising performance, productivity and skills in both the private and public sector. Ultimately, our vision is of a world where we see first-class management and leadership driving up personal and corporate performance, national productivity and social well being.

We do this by working in partnership with employers to identify and develop the management skills that drive performance, and by supporting and developing individuals with simple checklists, tailored training or qualifications. Of course, we also work closely with policy makers and influencers to help address the serious challenges that managers face.

In the end, we're here to equip managers with the necessary skills to deal with whatever challenges and decisions they face throughout the course of their career.

Question: Who is your membership made up of? And why is it important to represent them?

Ruth Spellman: We have 81,000 individual and 400 corporate members, with members right across the private, public and voluntary sectors. So we represent the views of managers ranging from the chief executives of multi-national companies to junior managers in small companies, and with the Institute of Business Consulting also now a part of the Chartered Management Institute, our breadth continues to grow. We see our role as helping to deliver our members' views and experiences of the practical realities of management back to government, hopefully leading to better and more effective policies.

Question: Can you tell us about the Chartered Management Institute's five-year strategy?

Ruth Spellman: It's an ambitious and very exciting new strategy for the Institute. The direction we're taking will enable us to establish a much more influential role in driving forward skills development in the UK.

To help shape the policy agenda we'll be issuing our own Green Papers and Manifestos on management and leadership. We'll also be developing joint policy initiatives with leading bodies in the field of skills development. To lead this crucial work, we've appointed Petra Wilton to a new post of director of policy and research.

The new strategy will also enable us to do more to help the estimated 4.6m managers in the UK realise their professional potential. By developing a new Leadership Standard and Human Capital Management Index we'll enable organisations to measure the benefits of improving their management and leadership skills.

We'll be encouraging more employers to invest in their employees by offering not just outstanding management and leadership development programmes but also access to unparalleled information resources, with more online products and products tailored for the SME market too. We need to strengthen our resources and capability to reach more individual managers and employers, and to achieve this we will be making major investments in improving our structures and service.

Question: This week the Chartered Management Institute published research on the economic impact of professional bodies. What are the benefits of professional qualifications for individual earnings?

Ruth Spellman: The report that we are launching this week was commissioned from London Economics by eight leading professional bodies, including the CMI. The report's analysis of Labour Force Survey data shows that the estimated life-time economic benefit of holding professional qualifications and membership of a professional institute is £152,000 in today's money. £81,000 of this comes directly from achieving a professional qualification and £71,000 from holding professional membership.

In the context of the current skills crisis, this really is significant news. We've known for a long time about the values placed on academic qualifications, but this is the first time that we've had evidence that puts a real value on professionalism. Put simply, the employer community is saying that it recognises the need for professional skills and it is prepared to pay a premium for employees who have them.

Question: How has the state of the economy affected managers? What would your advice be to managers in dealing with the current economic climate?

Ruth Spellman: We all face mounting pressure to control or reduce costs and many managers face the prospect of job losses in their organisations – possibly including their own jobs. One of our most recent surveys found that just one in five managers felt secure in their jobs. Such uncertainty makes everybody's jobs more difficult.

So now, more than ever, managers and leaders have to be ready to lead the way out of these turbulent times. Our advice is for managers to prepare themselves and their teams for the challenges of the coming year. They'll need to pay particular attention to core business needs and it's also vital that managers are not afraid to innovate. Everything that the Institute does is about helping managers and leaders to deal with these challenges.

And for any manager looking to 'recession-proof' themselves, professional qualifications can be a valuable asset. Our new report shows that individuals with professional qualifications have a nine per cent higher chance of being employed.

The point is that professional qualifications are not just about showing what you know; it's about proving the impact you can make on your organisation's bottom line or in terms of achieving performance targets. It's about demonstrating that you have the practical ability to help lead your organisation through challenging times.

Question: There is a lot of debate around how to tackle the skills challenge that faces Britain today. What role can managers play in addressing this skills shortfall?

Ruth Spellman: Managers play a pivotal role in supporting a culture of workplace learning and up-skilling. There is evidence to suggest that managers that are themselves well-trained will do more to help raise skills levels among their teams.

But we still have a significant skills gap when it comes to management and leadership skills themselves – and the need for leadership and management skills is growing, with the number of UK managers predicted to grow by 1.3 per cent per annum between now and 2014.

Yet over a third of organisations report that their managers are not proficient. As Leitch showed, a significant proportion of managers are under-qualified, with 41 per cent of managers having a qualification lower than Level 2. Furthermore, only 38.5 per cent of managers and senior officials are qualified at Level 4 or above, compared to 81 per cent of those in professional occupations.

As such, the Institute is calling for at least 50 per cent of managers to be qualified in management to level 4 or higher by 2020. The bottom line is that we need more, better qualified managers in the UK in order to remain competitive on a global scale.

Question: Looking to the new parliamentary session, can you tell us about the key policy areas the CMI is interested in?

Ruth Spellman: We're delighted that the government has responded to the need to encourage investment in skills and will be introducing a new right to request time to train. Clearly, there is an urgent need to increase levels of skills training, particularly those associated with leadership and management, and we believe that the new Bill will have a positive effect. As our submission to DIUS on the proposals highlighted, 64 per cent of employers feel that the new right to request will increase training levels, with a similar number agreeing that it would improve employee motivation.

We also welcomed the news that the right to request flexible working will be extending to parents of children aged up to 16. Only a minority of managers and leaders supported suggestions to delay these proposals and in fact, more than half went further and called for 'flexible working for all'. In the current economic climate it makes sense for employers to give serious consideration to flexible working requests. Giving staff the opportunity to reduce their travel time or adjust their specific hours can be highly motivating and help employers to retain key talent at a time when UK organisations need their skills the most.

I am also pleased to see the Equality Bill finally published. It's a definite move in the right direction. Today the problem is that even in sectors and functions with a high percentage of female managers, there is a distinct gap in remuneration. The implication is that women are not achieving the best paid jobs in their own field. It's imperative that government and employers tackle the issue head on to ensure that career progression and reward are based on ability and achievement, rather than gender.