NEW national occupational standards for management and leadership have been launched.

The move has been made by the Management Standards Centre (MSC), in response to the announcement that poor management is holding back the UK economy at the present time.

The MSC, an organisation within the Chartered Management Institute, launched the new standards last week after a Government-backed study revealed its findings on poor management.

The standards, which were revealed at an event organised by the Skills for Business Network, have been developed to provide a set of best-practice guidelines for management and leadership development across all industry sectors.

Designed to provide a framework for managers and their employers to follow, the subjects cover a variety of topics including change management, customer service, delivering equality of opportunity and team leadership.

For the first time, the new standards will:

cover 47 skills topics, including newly-identified skill priority areas such as innovation, risk management and diversity

provide much greater clarity about the value of learning from management qualifications. Employers and employees will be able to see more clearly the value of qualifications, as they will be more simply mapped to the standards

enable far greater flexibility, as relevant modules from the standards can be transferred more easily to sector specific qualifications

allow much greater adoption by employers, as the new format is readily available as a day-to-day support tool for management tasks, ranging from training needs analysis and job profiling through to in-company training programmes.

Ivan Lewis, minister for skills and vocational education, said: "These new standards will help employers recruit and train the two million new managers they need by 2012.

"Our skills strategy is ensuring organisations will get the training they need through the new Sector Skills Councils and that providers will increasingly offer the training that employers and individuals want."

The standards have been developed by the MSC to be used flexibly across the public, private and voluntary sectors, and by organisations of all sizes.

They are available to download by visiting www.management-standards.org and will be subject to ongoing review and development.