Good Employment
Learning Lab

Supporting line managers in the North West to provide better management for their employees.

Welcome to the Good Employment Learning Lab, a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council to develop and test the most effective ways of supporting line managers to manage people.

Manchester Met HR experts have delivered a training programme for 366 line managers across Greater Manchester and the North West to understand and tackle a variety of management challenges. We are conducting research on this training to understand what works, for whom and why.

Of paramount important are the views and experiences of the hundreds of line managers who have taken part in our learning trials and evaluation. We have also spoken to some of their staff to find out how line manager training shapes their work and working lives.

What is the Good Employment Learning Lab?

The quality of people’s working lives is highly dependent on how well they are supervised or managed. And the efficiency of teams also depends on good line management. Some line managers love managing people and have lots of skills and experience. But many line managers find people management challenging and would like more support to manage people effectively. This is why we developed The Good Employment Learning Lab, to find out about ‘what works, for whom and why’ to influence the support available to line managers.

What are learning labs?

Learning Labs are online or offline spaces where researchers, policy makers, practitioners and managers collaborate to understand and address shared problems. Learning Labs support long-term, trusting, and creative relationships and use learning from particular experiments to think about how to address ‘tricky’ problems. Our research team are Engaged Scholars. We believe in devising and conducting research projects with stakeholders.

Our three learning labs

Greater Manchester good employment learning lab

The Greater Manchester Good Employment Learning Lab is delivered in partnership with the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter (a coalition of local government, employers, trade unions, workers and other experts aiming to deliver good job opportunities in Greater Manchester).

Adult social care good employment learning lab

The Adult Social Care Good Employment Learning Lab is focused on managers of adult social care, conducted at home or in residential care, across the UK. We are working with a range of partners in Greater Manchester and the Northwest including the GM Health and Social Care Partnership, GM’s Local Care Organisation, Manchester City Council and Skills for Care (Northwest).

Both Learning Labs are also supported by the CIPD, ACAS, the Federation of Small Businesses, and the TUC.

Engaged scholarship learning lab

As we are passionate about sharing research and practice experience, we have also created an Engaged Scholarship Learning Lab to raise the skills of researchers, policy makers and organisations to make sense of tricky problems together. We have created Introducing, Becoming and Practising Engaged Scholarship workshops, as well as a series of webinars and podcasts.

Research: Engaged Scholarship Learning Lab

Our approach

Evidence-based management

Our training tackles issues that our partners tell us are common for line managers. We build on evidence-based ways of thinking about and tackling these challenges.

The management challenges we tackled: agile working; work security; values-based recruitment; developing a creative team; managing conflict; getting the most out of your team.

Learning pillars

Our training is based on evidence-based management learning practices:

Gain knowledge
Reflect
Make sense
Intend to experiment
Learning together

Short interventions designed on a theory of change

We designed masterclasses, flash peer learning (three sessions) and coaching (three sessions), based on how we thought changes might be made for managers.

Realist evaluation

So that we could understand how learning varies according to the type of line manager and their context, we evaluated ‘what works for whom and why?’.

Get involved

During 2021 we delivered training to 366 line managers across Greater Manchester and the Northwest, through masterclasses, peer learning and coaching. We are now working to understand what works, for whom and why. Sound interesting?

We’d love to hear from managers, businesses, educators, and policy makers about our work and gain other perspectives to help us understand people management.

We are sharing our learning through:

Conversations with anyone who commissions or delivers people management skills development for line managers. Please get in touch to join our network or to start a conversation.
A programme of events and a series of reports, summaries, and other media, such as video – check back here for more information.
Our resource bank.

You can also get involved and find support through our partner organisations.