Digital and Creative sector stats … what the numbers say

Posted by estelleentiere on 10/20/2015 in Gamechangers, Hiring |No Comments

If you haven’t heard about it before the Commission for Employment and Skills is a publicly funded, industry led organisation.  Its commissioners are a social partnership made up of CEOs of large and small businesses, employment advisors and Trade Union representatives from across the UK.

In June 2015 they published their Insights for the digital and creative sector which provided an update on their major sector review in October 2012.

It makes very interesting, if long, reading so here is a quick synopsis of the points we thought were the most important.

Firstly, let’s clarify a couple of key points about the report.  The sector includes businesses and professionals in Advertising and Market Research, Publishing, Programming and Broadcasting, Telecoms along with Design. Photography, Movie making amongst others.

As a whole, the sector employs 2.1 million people in the UK and contributed £134bn to the economy in 2014.  There has been steep growth in the last ten years –

There are some specific findings about our world that are worth noting: 48% of our professionals are educated to degree level and above and 47% of them are in London and the south east.  A very high proportion are self-employed and a higher than average percentage work for ‘micro-enterprises’ – only 6% of businesses within the sector employ more than 10 people.

Future Growth.

Their analysis on the sector in the future is a succinct list of bases that need to be covered in order to survive and thrive:

Technological advances are driving demand – we will need an additional 1.2 million new people by 2022 to staff businesses across the sector – most of them highly skilled.  That’s equivalent to about half the current workforce and only 6 years away!

Globalisation will provide access to new markets but it will continue to drive greater international competition.

Employers are increasingly seeking a fusion of creative and technical skills.  This comes up a lot and needs addressing in the way that we hire, train and invest in young people.

The growing importance of big data, analytics, collaborative platforms and security will drive innovation in these areas and will affect an ever wider percentage of the working population – specifically in digital, creative and media sectors.

The Employer Challenge

This sector is highly unusual in its employment model – 34% are self-employed compared with 14% across the wider economy, this figure continues to rise.

The sector’s workforce enjoys some of the highest levels of variety, discretion over work and flexibility in working arrangements in the whole economy.

The proportion of employers with a training plan is much lower that the wider economy – 23% compared with 38%.

Technological change remains a central driver within the sector.

Critical skills priorities

These are some of the key findings from the CES report – they certainly present challenges and also huge opportunities for those who act on them.

There is significant and increasing demand for those who can cope with market change and increasing competition.  An ability to adopt high performance working practices and lead change management programs will be key to future competitiveness in the sector.

The increasingly global scale of opportunities and competition coupled with the increasing breadth and complexity of these industries will continue to invoke the needs for skills in brokering and maintaining networks and partnerships across both geographies and sectors.

The fusion of innovation and creativity has been highlighted as a priority for many years – this will stay on the list of priorities for some time to come.  Employers reported that the boundaries between ‘digital’ and ‘creative’ are becoming blurred as creative activities increasingly rely on digital technologies, and as creativity and design become increasingly important to digital outputs.

The multi-platform environment in which the sector operates has created new demands at both the leadership and professional level.  We need hybrid skills combining project management with creative leadership and technological savvy with content creation – across multiple platforms.

There are many questions and challenges raised by the report – not all of them are new news of course, seeing them side by side highlights some areas of focus.

• Even if you’re not a small business – you’ll almost certainly face competition from them.
• Change is the only constant – you need people who can cope with and manage that.
• Freelancers form a large percentage of your talent pool – make your business a destination.
• Innovative, creative, tech savvy talent is what you (and the rest of the sector) needs.  What does your talent want?