CMI responds to Spring Budget 2024

Anthony Painter, Policy Director at the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), said: 

The Chancellor’s focus on growing the economy and increasing public sector productivity, while welcome, will not, in practice, be realised unless we match investment in high quality management skills with consistent public and private investment.

Forecasts of low levels of public investment for the rest of the decade in the Budget are concerning. And unless we begin to prioritise management capability we will not be able to close productivity gaps with the leading industrial nations.

Newly-released CMI research revealing that the UK suffers from chronic underinvestment in management and leadership training shows that the UK cannot overcome its competitive disadvantage with other leading economies - notably the US, Germany and South Korea - unless it commits to developing the next generation of highly-skilled managers across our public services and private industry and makes a bigger commitment to long-term investment in tech, infrastructure and public services.

The pressures facing public services, and in particular the NHS, are having an outsized impact on UK workplaces. Absenteeism, lost productivity, and growing uncertainty about the ability to access care when people need it are contributing to a worrying picture for both employers and employees. CMI research has consistently shown that excellent management means excellent public services. AI and other tech innovation is so important and the investments announced today in that regard are welcome. So is having management and leadership able to maximise their impact and we need to hear more about plans there.

If there’s a theme we need to adopt far more decisively in the coming years, it’s one of determined focus on high-level skills and transformative investment. Elements of this were visible today and in the Autumn Statement. But we still have much, much further to go.