Chinwag Skills Survey
Is the skills shortage in digital media hindering the growth of the sector, what do employers think is going to happen over the next year and what can they do to help? Just some of the questions those clever people over at Chinwag have been asking in their Digital Skills Survey published last week. With very interesting results.
97% of respondents found it difficult to attract the right digital staff to their businesses. 76% found it difficult to retain staff and businesses have found themselves using freelancers more in 2007 more than in previous years.
Yes, you did read that correctly, the majority of the couple of hundred surveyed find it difficult to get the right staff - staggering. We know that gradates coming into the workforce are not deemed to have the right skills by industry, a longer term issue being addressed by the Skillset Media Academies. The existing workforce up-skill motivated by needs to learn additional ‘add ons’ or upgrades related to their core skills, which is great but in a freelance market it means business cannot keep and share talent in house. Little cross skilling into diversified or new areas exists or indeed the support to do so.
So just how can the sector function, not to mention grow business, when faced with firefighting skills issues on a day to day basis?
We will be conducting the Skillset workforce survey in April this year which will bring additional training and skills issues into the picture (all of this will help shape the updated interactive media action plan which will outline were we need to get to in order to start addressing these issues in the short and long term). However the priority for now is how do we quickly put measures in place to ensure the right skills are in the marketplace. And we need industry to help us solve that problem.
All of this and more will be discussed in the Chinwag Skills Emergency seminar next Tues Jan 29th. I am on the panel and its a great opportunity to get the discussion going.
Explore posts in the same categories: Interactive
January 30th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
As an employer, this is probably the major obstacle to growth. Finding the right staff, then retaining them, is a nightmare. I could expand…. but suspect most people inthe same boat as me would just be reading their own experiences. Likewise, the tasks of finding reliable, capable freelancers who are up to the task in hand.
Maybe we’ve got to think outside the box. Of all the industries I’ve worked in, the Interactive sector has to be the “nicest”, in that whilst there is inevitable competition, there’s also a very healthy collaboration between companies in many instances. Maybe we need to think about taking this a step further, and” jointly” employing good people ? The nature of the industry means that it’s often difficult to justify employing specialists on a full time basis - so shared employment of specialists could be an option worth exploring further ?
A more proactive, meaningful partnership between industry and academia is also an area that could help address some of these issues constructively, leading to a pretty quick fix. There are some interesting discussions going on currently, and it will be good to see “models of best practice” being shared, possibly around these forums, that others can benefit from, and replicate ?
But “Skills Emergency ?” I’d say it’s a lot more serious and imediate than just a simple emergency…….
January 31st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
One point, that is often made in the post production sector, is salary.
The skills that staff have are transferable not just to other companies but to other sectors - VFX boys and girls getting stolen for their software expertise by the corporate finance industries. Andthe capitalists will always have deeper pockets than the creatives. Retaining staff when they are offered significant increases in wages is near-impossible - unless, and Huw’s point is well made, we can make our industries more attractive in different ways, more rewarding (perhaps even holistic) than just chasing the pound signs. It’s not just in recruitment that we need to do it - it’s in keeping the talent you’ve got.