TL;DR
- The Department for Education's Employer Skills Survey 2024 found that 59% of UK employers had funded or arranged training in the previous 12 months, and that management training was provided by 34% of the employers that train, up from 32% in 2022.
- Management and leadership skills were lacking in around half of skills gaps (49%). The ONS found 89% of firms took some action to improve management quality in 2023, but only 43% carried out formal training online and 42% in person.
- No official UK statistic counts first time managers, or how many are trained before they are put in charge of people. The nearest checkable measures are the large staff surveys that ask employees what their manager actually does.
Ask how many UK managers have been trained for the job and a figure will arrive within seconds. Almost none of those figures come from an official source. The ones that do exist are narrower than the question, and they are worth knowing precisely rather than approximately.
This article sets out the manager training statistics that can be checked against a published release, what each one actually covers, and which first time manager statistics nobody publishes at all.
Training a new manager and giving them something to manage with are two different jobs. See how New Dynamics continuous feedback hands a first time manager a record of the year rather than a blank form in the final month.
For the narrower question of preparing managers to run a review cycle, our post on performance review training for managers covers the content itself.
What is actually published on manager training
The best official source is the Employer Skills Survey, run for the Department for Education. The 2024 results were published on 24 July 2025 and draw on 22,712 employer interviews across the United Kingdom.
On training in general, the UK report records that "Almost three-fifths (59%) of UK employers in 2024 had funded or arranged training over the previous 12 months", and that 63% of all employees received training in 2024, up from 60% in 2022.
On management specifically, the same report says employers "more commonly provided training in new technology (50% vs. 46%), management training (34% vs. 32%) and supervisory training (34% vs. 33%) in 2024 compared with 2022".
Read the base carefully, because this is where most second-hand versions of the figure go wrong. The 34% is a share of employers that provided any training, not of all employers. Combine the two and roughly one employer in five provided management training. That multiplication is ours rather than the Department's, and it assumes the two bases line up neatly, so treat it as an order of magnitude and quote the published 34% instead.
The sector pattern is published too. Management and supervisory training was most common in education (56% and 43%), public administration (49% and 43%), health and social work (46% and 49%) and hotels and restaurants (42% and 46%).
Where the manager training gap shows up
The same survey measures what employers say is missing. In 2024, 12% of employers reported skills gaps, meaning at least one member of staff judged to lack full proficiency, and 1.26 million employees in the UK workforce were judged by employers to have a skills gap.
Inside those gaps, the report states that "Management and leadership skills were lacking in around half of skills gaps (49%), in line with 2022 levels (48%)". The figure peaks at 54% among sites with 25 to 49 employees, which is roughly the size at which a business first needs a layer of managers and often has no one to train them.
Vacancies tell a similar story. Among skill-shortage vacancies, self-management skills were the most common deficiency at 54%, followed by management and leadership skills at 46%. The single skill rising fastest was managing or motivating employees, a factor in 35% of skill-shortage vacancies in 2024, up from 31% in 2022.
Two readings sit side by side here. Employers are increasingly clear that people management is the skill they cannot find. The proportion of them training managers moved by two percentage points in the same period.
Taking action on management is not the same as training
The ONS runs a separate and more structural measure. The Management and Expectations Survey asks firms about four dimensions of management: how they respond to problems, their use of key performance indicators, their use of targets, and employment practices covering promotion, training and underperformance.
The third survey was conducted from November 2023 to March 2024, sampled 53,433 businesses with a 27% response rate, covered firms with 10 or more employees, and excluded agriculture, financial services and the public sector. Scores run from 0 to 1.
Three further findings in that bulletin matter more than the headline.
Scores rise with size. Firms with more than 250 employees scored 0.68 on average, against 0.65 for 100 to 249 employees, 0.63 for 50 to 99, 0.58 for 20 to 49 and 0.51 for 10 to 19. Structured management practice is largely a function of having enough people to justify it.
The firms furthest behind train least. The bulletin reports that firms in the bottom tenth of management practice scores were more likely to have taken no action at all, and that when they did act they tended to consult internally or run their own experimental changes rather than take formal training. The gap compounds.
Time, not money, is the stated barrier. Firms most commonly said they had little time to think about the changes required (36%), or that there were no barriers at all (32%).
The overall mean score was 0.55 in 2023, up from 0.49 in 2020, and the ONS attributes that improvement to firms that had been below the median catching up.
First time manager statistics: what nobody publishes
This is the honest part of the article, and it is the reason most figures in circulation are untraceable.
No official UK statistic counts first time managers. Nothing published says how many people were promoted into their first people-management role last year, what proportion had any training before it, or how long they waited for the first piece of support afterwards.
The nearest official number is a stock, not a flow. The ONS reported from Census 2021 that in England and Wales, in the week before 21 March 2021, people were employed "as managers, directors and senior officials (12.8%, 3.5 million)". That counts how many managers exist. It says nothing about how many are new, or how many were prepared.
The accidental manager is a description, not a measured quantity. Government work on management practice refers to the problem without putting an official number on it. The Department for Business and Trade's final evaluation of Help to Grow: Management, dated June 2026, says that "SMEs in the UK are reportedly less likely to adopt leadership and management practices, ranking fifth in the G7, and perform particularly poorly on people management". Note the word reportedly. That sentence sets out the problem the programme was built for, citing other research, and is not itself an official measurement.
Three more have no official source at all. Average training hours per manager, training spend per manager, and the proportion of UK managers holding a management qualification. Each is quoted freely online. None of them comes from a national statistic.
For the figures the United Kingdom does publish on work, pay, absence and the workforce, our HR statistics hub collects them with the publisher and the period attached.
What employees say their managers do
If you cannot count manager training directly, the next best evidence is what large workforces say about manager behaviour. Two surveys publish it.
The NHS Staff Survey 2025 national results briefing, published in March 2026, was answered by 766,285 staff at a 49% response rate. Its Line management sub-score is 6.92 out of 10, which the briefing describes as its highest level since it was first reported in 2021. Underneath it:
| What the immediate manager does | 2025 | 2024 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Encourages me at work | 73.04% | 73.02% | 70.11% |
| Takes a positive interest in my health and well-being | 71.64% | 71.47% | 68.15% |
| Gives me clear feedback on my work | 66.55% | 66.26% | 62.43% |
| Asks for my opinion before decisions that affect my work | 60.05% | 59.99% | 57.12% |
The briefing's own summary of the feedback measure is that "Approximately two thirds of staff say their immediate manager gives them clear feedback on their work". Four years of slow improvement, and a third of a very large workforce still not getting clear feedback.
Development runs the other way. The same briefing reports that the Development sub-score fell to 6.33 and is at its lowest level since 2021, with 55.24% feeling supported to develop their potential, down from 56.91%, and 51.15% saying there are opportunities to develop their career in their organisation.
The Civil Service People Survey 2025, published on 28 May 2026, was answered by "343,961 civil servants from 102 organisations" at a 59% response rate. Its My manager theme sits at a Civil Service benchmark of 76%, down one percentage point. Leadership and managing change sits at 50%. Learning and development sits at 56%, and the highlights note that among main organisations "Learning and development" had the largest decrease of any theme, down two percentage points.
The pattern across both is the same. Day-to-day line management holds up reasonably well and improves slowly. Development, which is where manager training would show, is going backwards.
The one training programme with published numbers
Help to Grow: Management is the Department for Business and Trade's management training programme, delivered through business schools, with a participant fee of 750 pounds. Its Phase 1 final evaluation reports that between 2021 and 2025 the programme delivered 617 cohorts through 66 business schools, reaching 9,847 SME leaders, and that more than four in every five SME leaders (84%) who enrolled went on to complete it, a rate consistent across all four years.
On outcomes, 91% of completers said they had gained improved leadership and management skills, and 91% increased awareness of the factors that drive business productivity and growth. Those are self-reported by people who chose to attend and paid to be there, so read them as satisfaction rather than as measured capability.
Set the reach against the scale. Around 9,847 SME leaders over four years, against 3.5 million managers, directors and senior officials in England and Wales alone.
Four manager training numbers to produce yourself
None of these needs a national benchmark to be useful, and every one of them is available inside your own organisation.
- The share of managers trained before they led anyone. Count promotions into people management over the last two years, then count how many had any training before the start date. This is the first time manager statistic nobody publishes, and you can produce it in an afternoon.
- Your own clear feedback score. Ask the NHS question, worded the same way: does your immediate manager give you clear feedback on your work? You then have a figure directly comparable with a published national one.
- Days from promotion to the first real conversation about managing. Not the induction slide deck. The first coaching session, the first one to one about their new team, the first time anyone asked how it was going. Our manager one to one guide covers the shape of that conversation.
- Team outcomes split by manager. Turnover, absence, review completion and feedback volume, by manager rather than by department, wherever team sizes protect anonymity. Our post on manager performance sets out how to read those splits fairly.
A fifth is worth adding if you can: the proportion of your managers who have had any management training in the last two years. Compare it with the 34% from the Employer Skills Survey and you at least know which side of the national picture you sit on.
What usually goes wrong
- Quoting the 34% as a share of all employers. It is a share of the employers that train, and the difference is large.
- Treating "took action to improve management" as training. The ONS separates them for a reason, and most of the action was consultation rather than training.
- Using a vendor figure for first time managers, because no official one exists and the invented versions are very widely repeated.
- Training managers and measuring nothing afterwards, which leaves the spend unaccountable and the next budget request unsupported.
- Promoting the best individual contributor and calling it a development opportunity, which our post on management skills treats as a separate problem from training.
- Reporting attendance as the result. Completion of a course is the easy number, in the same way that completion of a review cycle is.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of UK employers provide management training?
Management training was provided by 34% of UK employers that had funded or arranged any training in the previous 12 months, up from 32% in 2022, according to the Employer Skills Survey 2024. Supervisory training was also 34%. Separately, 59% of UK employers had funded or arranged training at all, so the 34% describes a subset of employers rather than all of them.
Are there official first time manager statistics in the UK?
No. No official United Kingdom statistic counts first time managers, how many had training before taking charge of people, or how long they waited for support afterwards. Census 2021 reported 3.5 million managers, directors and senior officials in England and Wales, which is a count of managers rather than a count of new ones.
How big is the management and leadership skills gap in the UK?
The Employer Skills Survey 2024 found management and leadership skills were lacking in around half of skills gaps, at 49%, in line with 48% in 2022. Among skill-shortage vacancies, management and leadership skills were a factor in 46%, and managing or motivating employees specifically in 35%, up from 31% in 2022.
Is there a statistic for the accidental manager?
Not an official one. Government work on management practice describes the problem without measuring it. The Department for Business and Trade's Help to Grow: Management evaluation says UK SMEs are reportedly less likely to adopt leadership and management practices and perform particularly poorly on people management, citing other research rather than an official count.
What do UK staff surveys say about manager quality?
In the NHS Staff Survey 2025, 66.55% of staff said their immediate manager gives them clear feedback on their work, 73.04% that their manager encourages them at work, and 60.05% that their manager asks for their opinion before decisions that affect their work. In the Civil Service People Survey 2025, the My manager theme sat at a benchmark of 76%, down one percentage point.
How many managers has Help to Grow: Management trained?
The programme's Phase 1 final evaluation reports 617 cohorts delivered through 66 business schools between 2021 and 2025, reaching 9,847 SME leaders, with 84% of those who enrolled going on to complete. That is the published figure for one government programme, not a measure of management training across the economy.
Your next step: count your own untrained managers
- List every promotion into people management over the last two years.
- Mark which of them had any management training before the start date, and work out the percentage. That is your own first time manager statistic.
- Add the NHS feedback question to your next survey, worded exactly as published, so you have one figure with a national comparison.
- Pick the manager with the team outcome you cannot explain, and ask what support they were given in their first month.
For the conversation that does most of the work once a manager is in post, read and download our manager one to one guide. The guide is free to read, and the PDF uses our short download form.
Want new managers working from a year of evidence rather than memory? Book a New Dynamics demo and bring your last two years of promotions into management. You can also email contact@new-dynamics.com.
