Health and social care managers rated their own management and leadership competence higher after a 43-hour training programme, according to a before-and-after study of 30 managers. Their average overall score rose from 2.71 before the programme to 3.17 afterwards, a reported increase of 17.2%.
The rise was reported across all 12 competency areas measured. Change management showed the largest relative increase, 23.1%, while development competence showed the smallest, 7.7%. Other reported increases included 22.7% for evidence-based practice, 19.9% for human resource management, 18.9% for well-being at work and 20.1% for financial management.
The result is about self-assessed competence, not a demonstrated change in managerial performance. Because the study had no separate control group and measured the managers immediately after the programme, the higher scores cannot be attributed to the training alone.
How the assessment was carried out
The programme ran from September 2024 to March 2025 and provided 43 hours of training. It used internal and external experts, with group, common, remote and in-person sessions, and included a 360-degree assessment. Researchers used a one-group pretest-post-test design: the same managers completed electronic self-assessments before and after training, with no control group for comparison.
Of 105 managers who attended, 63 completed the pre-training survey and 33 completed the post-training survey. Only 30 completed both surveys and were included in the paired analysis. In that group, 83% were women, the mean age was 48, 70% held a master’s degree and 73% worked full-time. They had an average of 19 years’ experience in the sector and 4.8 years as managers.
The questionnaire included 17 background questions and 58 competence items covering 12 competencies, plus an overall competence measure. Its internal consistency, a check on whether items in a scale produce coherent responses, was high by the authors’ report: Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.794 to 0.960 across the competency scales and was 0.976 overall. That measure does not establish that the questionnaire captures objective competence.
The study also looked for links between managers’ background characteristics and their competence scores. Completion of management studies showed the most consistent association at both time points. Other associations varied: age, employment status, sector and current-position experience, and the number of subordinates were linked to selected competencies, while gender, highest education and budget responsibility showed no systematic pattern.
Those links were associations, not causal estimates. The researchers could not tell from these comparisons whether a background characteristic changed competence, and the small sample and number of comparisons make the patterns difficult to interpret.
Why the result needs caution
The study’s design leaves the main result open to other explanations. Without a control group, changes over time, shifts in the organisation or familiarity with the questionnaire could have contributed to the higher scores. An immediate post-training assessment also cannot show whether any gain lasted.
How widely the finding applies is also unclear. The analysis included 30 of 105 eligible managers, all of them frontline managers, and relied on self-report. Participants and dropouts were similar in age and gender, but participants were more educated and more likely to have completed management training; dropouts were more experienced and worked in more demanding positions. That difference may have shaped who remained in the analysis.
Taken together, the findings show a rise in managers’ own ratings after one programme, but they do not establish a lasting effect or improvement in objective managerial, organisational or patient outcomes. The next questions are whether the self-assessed gains persist, whether they translate into real-world outcomes and whether similar results appear in larger groups or among middle and senior managers.
Paper data and sources
Original title: The effects of the Competent Manager Training Programme for the self-assessed management and leadership competencies of health and social care managers
Authors: Karsikas E, Tuomikoski A, Hukkanen E, Kanste O
Journal/Repository: Leadership in health services (Bradford, England)
Status: Peer-reviewed
First online: 2026-10-10
DOI: Not available
Original paper · Full text