An Introduction to the Creative Industries Sector - The Skills ...

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About 73,000 people are employed in the interactive media sub sector. The largest single groupare employed by companies that offer bespoke software development. The greatest proportion offreelancers are employed by companies offering content creation.Employers were generally positive about the future and 30% are expecting an increase in the sizeof their workforce.RecruitmentNearly half of the companies had recruited new staff over the past six months. Recruitment hasbeen from other interactive media companies in half the cases, and a quarter have taken on newgraduates. Less than one tenth had recruited school leavers. At the time of the survey over 80%of employers had no vacancies and for those that did the most common vacancy was forsales/telesales and marketing posts. Only 2% of companies reported any currently hard to fillvacancies. The main cause for this was identified as a lack of applicants with the required workingexperience and a lack of applicants with the required qualifications and skills or just a general lackof applicants. In terms of identifying what skills were lacking in relation to these applicants themajority of employers related to job-specific skills and over half identified cross-disciplinary skillsand customer service skills hard to find.Only 6% of companies reported a high staff turnover and these were in the areas ofsales/marketing and director/management posts and the most common reason given was theoverall condition of the market.Skills gapsOnly 4% of companies reported a skills gap. These were in management and technical architects.In regard to changing skills the majority of employers do not think skills are becoming more or lessimportant. The two skills that were identified as becoming more important were technical skillsand client handling skills. Although the sector is rapidly developing in some areas skills may betransferable whilst in other areas a different skill set may be required. Reasons for changingimportance in skills were change in demand for product, pressure to develop new products andservices, increased competition from outside UK and other technological development.TrainingJust under two thirds of companies had provided training for any of their staff over the past year.There is a strong correlation between size of company and training activity. The likelihood ofhaving training plans and training budgets increased with increasing size of employer.Training provision also varies greatly by type of company. Employers offering internet servicesand software/product sales offer the most training and those in pre/post production andproduction/development offer the lowest amount of training.Training delivery was in the form of on the job training in 85% of the cases followed by taughtcourses off site in 60% of cases.Awareness of external organisationsJust over 22% of employers had heard of the Digital Content Forum and awareness related tocontent creation and more of the smaller companies were aware. In respect of the two sectortraining organisations 48% of respondents had heard of Skillset and 15% had heard of thePublishing NTO.Links with external organisations tend to be with education providers such as universities, FEcolleges and schools.53
Additional commentaryThe bursting of the ‘dot.com bubble’ has been identified in the research as having an effect on thenumber of new start-up companies which is low and employment growth which has been flatalthough employers are more positive about the future.Although the sector appears quite healthy in terms of skill needs the surplus of employeesresulting from the ‘dot com. bubble’ burst may be drying up. Also there is a perceived view of thegrowing importance of technical skills and client handling skills.The effect of broadband is difficult to predict. The take-up has been slower and less than expectedhowever, this may change with aggressive marketing. The effect broadband will have on changesvia the demand for products is thought to create a demand for more people rather than a changein skills.If the sector does expand quickly the practise of recruiting from other interactive media companieswill soon create a need. There does not appear to be any particular external education course toprovide future employment for the sector. Training within the sector appears adequate although itmay still be somewhat unsystematic.Need to take into account the freelance proportion of the workforce and how their future trainingneeds may be met.54
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An Introduction to the Creative Ind
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List of Tables1 The creative indust
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1.0 Part 11.1 IntroductionThe devel
Page 10 and 11: work is being undertaken by Burns O
Page 13 and 14: • Employment in the creative indu
Page 15 and 16: Table 3 Number of employees in the
Page 17 and 18: espectively. Music & visual & perfo
Page 19 and 20: On the whole these figures are quit
Page 21 and 22: These sub sectors correspond to mos
Page 23 and 24: 2.4 Present skill requirementsResul
Page 25 and 26: • knowledge of the actual technol
Page 27 and 28: sector 81% of design consultancies
Page 29 and 30: In Gloucestershire there are about
Page 31 and 32: Useful WebsitesArts Council of Engl
Page 33 and 34: Appendix 1: Current DCMS Sector Cla
Page 35 and 36: Appendix 2: Relevant SOC categories
Page 37 and 38: 3.25 The three processes have devel
Page 39 and 40: Whilst there are a range of bodies
Page 41 and 42: Appendix 5: Numbers of VAT- based b
Page 43 and 44: Appendix 7: Comparison of the numbe
Page 45 and 46: Appendix 9:Number of employees in t
Page 47 and 48: Appendix 11:Number of employees in
Page 49 and 50: Appendix 13:Number of employers in
Page 51 and 52: Appendix: 15 Some of the larger com
Page 53 and 54: Company Name Activity District Post
Page 55 and 56: Appendix 17:Comparison of creative
Page 57: Companies were asked to identify fo
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An Introduction to the Creative Industries Sector - The Skills ...

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