Skills shortages holding back creative sector growth | Read skills audits of 11 creative industries sub-sectors
More than four in 10 employers in the creative industries are facing skills shortages or skills gaps, major new research reveals.
The finding was in the Creative Industries Skills Audits, a study published by Creative PEC and Work Advance following a commitment in the government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan to audit skills in the creative industries.
Accompanying the research was a survey of 1,300 creative industries employers which found that 65% of hard-to-fill vacancies in the creative industries are attributable to skills shortages, compared with 41% across the wider economy.
Of those struggling to fill vacancies, 69% said the skills challenges were having a direct impact on their business, including increasing the workload of other staff or hindering delivery capability. Another 21% said the issue was holding back innovation, and 19% admitted they were having to scale back growth or investment plans.
The report said:
“In the context of the UK Industrial Strategy, it is particularly concerning that one in five firms with skills challenges suggest these are hampering innovation and growth.”
Almost three quarters of those with hard-to-fill vacancies said the main cause was candidates lacking the required skills, and 32% reported skills deficiencies among their existing workforce. Of those that said the latter, 23% put the problem down to having to keep up with rapid evolving technology.
The report said:
“Employers across the sector widely expect a need to upgrade workforce skills – including technical, digital, transversal and critical business skills – in response to new technology, not least AI, and to achieve their organisation’s sustainability goals.”
Despite an ongoing focus on supporting new entrants to the creative industries, the report said that in many creative sub-sectors, skills shortages and gaps are most acute among midcareer talent. Over two fifths (42%) of employers with skills shortages and 37% with skills
gaps said their challenges relate to experienced staff.
Despite the need for training, 36% of employers lack funds for delivering it and 15% admitted managers are too busy to organise training and workers lack the time to participate.
The report said:
“This mid-level talent problem is often attributed to the effects of technology (including AI) and the rapid pace of career advancement in some creative sub-sectors, often without training necessary to develop the skills required in more senior roles.”
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To deal with what the report said is a “mismatch between the needs of a growing sector and the current skills system”, it made recommendations including:
– Local, regional and national governments should undertake place-based creative industries skills assessments. Government, industry and educators should forge a new ‘Pact for Skills’ as part of a new chapter of genuine partnership.
– National governments should prioritise initiatives to develop ‘transversal skills’ (core skills that cut across sectors such as planning and communication skills). Further education and higher education providers should embed transversal skills into courses as standard practice, building on curriculum reforms in England.
– UK government should fund new ‘Technical Excellence Networks’ to address advanced technical skill areas such as createch, green design and AI.
– The CIC should assess how current developments in the English skills system can be best leveraged for the sector, such as through developing new short courses (apprenticeship units) addressing the sub-sector-specific applications of AI and sustainability skills.
– Creative industries employers should widen the talent pool from which they recruit, including young people, those disadvantaged in the labour market and underrepresented talent.
– Sector bodies should curate a package of measures for creative industries freelancers, to enable them to upgrade their skills and advance their careers, working with the new freelance champion.
Alongside the sector-wide report, 11 separate audits showing granular data for each sub-sector have also been published:
Bristol Creative Industries is the membership network that supports the region's creative sector to learn, grow and connect, driven by the common belief that we can achieve more collectively than alone.
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