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W ith so much of senior managers' time taken up with meetings about strategy, the role of managing day to day tasks and the people that do them is increasingly falling to middle managers. So it should be of concern that it is often those middle managers that receive the least support and training to develop their skills.

For this reason a new faculty to support middle managers in continuing their development in the public sector has been set up by the Employers Organisation for local government and the Institute for Leadership and Management.

It will provide members with a quarterly magazine, an online resource centre and guidance on continued personal and professional development.

Rob Pinkham, executive director of the EO, said middle managers were often seen as the "forgotten practitioners" in management development.

The problem is that employees often climb the first rung of the management ladder without receiving sufficient training.

"People should have training before they are promoted and not six months after - you could do a lot of damage in that time," said Angela Baron, adviser to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. "One of the crucial factors in whether an employee thrives in their job is their relationship with their line manager."

Despite the importance of being able to manage people, Baron said that this is not often reflected in the time given to middle managers' training. "Yet they are increasingly delivering human resources policies and practices," she said. Smaller organisations, particularly those in the voluntary sector, ignored training in "softer skills", believing it to be overly expensive, she added. "But it doesn't have to be - people can be supported through coaching or mentoring."

The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations' Nick Aldridge, said the voluntary sector struggled because it spent only a third of what the public and private sectors spent on training.

"If an organisation is bidding to run a service for a council the emphasis is still on reducing costs. It is hard to make the case for building training costs into the bid, but if you don't train staff properly you get low quality services," he added.

To help remedy this the association has developed a diploma with the Institute of Directors which will give voluntary sector middle managers a qualification recognised in the business world.

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