COMPANIES MUST DO MORE TO NURTURE LEADERSHIP TALENT
1 January 2021Domino’s launches new Leadership Index ranking talent in UK’s top 60 towns and cities
‘Northern powerhouse’ needs to attract and retain more leaders
Vast pool of untapped potential could help plug leadership gap post-Brexit
Domino’s Pizza Group, the UK’s leading pizza company, today reveals which UK towns and cities have the most leaders.
The Domino’s Leadership Index highlights which urban centres are successfully harvesting leadership potential, as well as those with a pool of untapped talent. The study, drawn from official Government data, ranks the UK’s 60 most economically important towns and cities in terms of leadership.
Surprisingly, smaller towns and cities outperform the nation’s bigger economic centres, according to the analysis conducted for Domino’s by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. The Index’s top 10 towns and cities are: Aldershot, Crawley, Oxford, Reading, Exeter, Cambridge, Brighton, Warrington, London and Milton Keynes.
The report also reveals a substantial North-South divide with only one city in the North of England, Warrington (8), making the top 10 and many others punching below their weight. Unexpectedly, Manchester and Birmingham, which vie for the title of Britain’s second city, ranked only 32nd and 46th respectively in the Index. Liverpool (38), Leeds (24), Newcastle (34) and Sheffield (39) all come well below their top 10 economic status, highlighting a need for greater training and development.
By contrast, Oxford and Cambridge come third and sixth for leadership, thanks to the steady stream of graduates from their world-class universities, considerably outperforming their economic clout. High educational achievement also supports the leadership talent in Scotland, with Edinburgh ranked 12th in the Index, Glasgow 16th and Aberdeen 17th.
There are 3.4 million people in the UK classified as directors, managers or senior officials but that leaves 27.5 million people of working age, who could be leaders of the future with the right opportunities and training. Domino’s is urging UK businesses to do their part in nurturing the kind of influential and inspiring leaders it believes the hospitality sector needs.
Simon Wallis, Chief Operating Officer, Domino’s Pizza Group said: “Domino’s Leadership Index reveals some cities are overflowing with great leaders, but others are punching well below their weight. We must look at what more could we be doing to harness this talent, helping to plug the inevitable labour gap the hospitality industry faces as the UK moves closer to Brexit. The Government has a critical role to play in avoiding an exodos of EU workers from the sector, but companies must also do more to nurture home-grown talent. Government and business should work together to ensure we’re doing the best we can to retain and support the leaders of tomorrow. For us at Domino’s, great leadership is about strong communication and influencing skills, problem solving, and inspiring teams to raise their game; so far we’ve trained more than 18,000 people in these key skills.”
The UK hospitality sector alone needs to recruit and train more than 200,000 workers a year just to stand still, a pool of labour equivalent to a town the size of Warrington or Luton, where Domino’s opened its first UK store in 1985. This figure could increase significantly with some 330,000 people in the industry thinking of leaving the UK due to Brexit, and further still with the effective end of free movement. Domino’s wants young people to consider team leadership roles within the hospitality sector, which is why it launched TeamSkills, its training programme last year and made its learning and development materials available on its website for free.
Around 35,000 people work for Domino’s across more than 1,000 stores in the UK, and over 80% of its managers started life as delivery drivers or pizza makers. Many Domino’s team members go on to management positions in under two years, and some of its most successful franchisees began their careers on the shop floor, often having left school with few qualifications, but lots of ambition.
Simon Wallis went on to say: “We launched TeamSkills, which draws on Domino’s 30 years’ experience of what makes a great team leader, to help develop the next generation of leaders. We will create 21,000 UK jobs over the next few years, opening stores in many of the areas identified in the Index as having a talent pool. This includes clear progression opportunities for ambitious people in the North of England in areas such as Wolverhampton and Hull, helping to bridge the North-South leadership divide. With team members completing nearly 900 TeamSkills courses every day last year, we’re proud of the support we’re giving our future leaders.”
Nina Skero, Head of Macroeconomics at Cebr commented: “The findings clearly illustrate the unequal geographic distribution of leadership across the UK. With some of the larger, more economically important cities in the UK having much lower levels of leadership talent than their smaller counterparts, it’s obvious there is more to be done to promote leadership skills across the board. The research found there is a need for greater training and development, especially in the Northern cities, to develop and retain leadership talent.”
The report also reveals big talent gaps between neighbouring towns and cities with, for example, Exeter (5) ranking higher than Bristol (11); Bournemouth (15) beating Southampton (21); Cardiff (14) outranking Swansea (44). Manchester (32) comes ahead of Liverpool (38); and Birmingham (46) is placed well above Wolverhampton (60).