Endangered Industry: How to Create a Healthy And Thriving Talent Ecosystem
[This talk was delivered at Wildscreen 2022 on Monday 10 October - Endangered Industry session.]
I set up Gritty Talent three years ago to connect talented people from under-represented groups into the TV and wider media industry. We work with indies and broadcasters to help them assess how they are doing, and to put in place inclusion plans that really work.
But in the process of trying to find solutions to the problem - I actually discovered another big, hairy, intersecting one. Turns out we don’t just have a representation issue. We have an all-out survival issue.
I know it might sound dramatic - but this sector is experiencing a talent pipeline crisis - and how we manage this crisis will determine the future prosperity of this industry. Your ability to make the volume, quality and ambition of films that you make is directly linked to the volume, quality and ambition of talent that is available in the market.
The Problem The TV & Film Industries Face
The ScreenSkills Unscripted report published in March this year found every part of the UK is reporting serious skills and talent gaps. Roles experiencing extreme shortages include Production Co-ordinators and Production Managers. They are as rare as some of the animals that you film. It might feel like boom time…
BFI figures from 2021 reveal a record £5.64 billion spent on film and high-end TV production in the UK - the highest figure ever reported…
…but there’s just not enough skilled talent in the market to make all these brilliant, world-class, ground-breaking series. How can we grow and evolve as a sector if we don’t have the capacity to make all the projects that we have on the boil right now?
ScreenSkills also made forecasts on the future of the labour market within High End TV - with a low and high growth estimate. Given that the HETV market has seen exponential growth in the last year - it's the high growth figure we need to track. This estimate is that the labour shortage will go from 6330 in 2022 to 20,770 in 2025; a shortfall of almost 21 thousand people in less than 2.5 years time. But why is this a diversity and inclusion issue?
Because our pipeline is too narrow.
The Facts
Brilliant talent from a broad range of groups is either being excluded from joining, or if they’ve made it in - they are finding it hard to sustain a career and progress. Many of them will leave as a result.
In fact: a recent five year review of the UK TV & Film sector by Ofcom found that women are more likely to be leaving television than joining it. Disabled, deaf and neurodivergent people are represented at nowhere near the UK population level of 20%; it’s about 6% and if we continue on the same path, the proportion of TV & film employees who are disabled will actually fall over the next five years.
While people from Black, Asian and other non-white ethnicities are being recruited in increasing numbers, they remain clustered in junior positions and under-represented at senior, decision-making levels. Black Producers, Directors and P/Ds make up between 1-2% of the senior workforce in Unscripted.
So these trends might help to explain the missing 21 thousand. It sounds insurmountable but it actually presents a golden opportunity for the industry to galvanise and work on bigger structural solutions together.
Imagine if we could deploy the same problem-solving and collaborative muscle to the talent crisis as we have together to the climate crisis to engage with and bring forward talent from under-represented groups in a consistent and at scale way - to build your healthy, abundant ecosystem of the future.
But first we need to try to understand the reasons why this industry is not attracting and retaining the best talent from all parts of society. If we are to stem the tide of early to mid level talent leaving the sector, we have to ask ourselves some difficult questions.
Why do so many people from Black, Asian and Minority ethnic groups feel unsupported, and like they have to leave? Why are more women leaving than joining? Why are the numbers of disabled people coming in and staying going backwards, when we have all the tools at our disposal to make this the most accessible industry in the world?
Understanding The Problem
The reasons are nuanced and intersecting… but some of the sector reports on inclusion in TV & Film have cited these as reasons why talent from under-represented groups leave:
Burnout and fatigue
Lack of flexible working practices
Barriers to promotion for women returning after maternity, and/or those with caring responsibilities
A culture that doesn’t allow for people to take up training even when it is free
And on the very serious side of things, a culture where incidents of bullying, micro-aggressions and discrimination are not held to account or even taken seriously.
There’s also a heap of cross-cutting economic, educational, structural and cultural reasons why people with great skills and huge potential don’t end up being looked at by decision makers in the first place. The problem with socioeconomic barriers is that they are really hard to measure. But consider these two things:
How many on your team have a degree?
How many have a driving licence?
If your personal circumstances mean you haven’t been able to access higher education, or pay thousands of pounds to learn to drive - how easy will it be to get you first, often low paid job in TV, especially when competing with graduates, people who can work for very little, give free time or have their own car?
Our industry has a range of entry and mid level talent schemes, but we need to sit up and take notice of the ones that work. We need to understand why they work - and we cannot see our job as done the moment someone finishes on a scheme. They will need mentoring, help growing their network, access to bursaries, and ongoing training in order to not just survive, but thrive.
The Journey Ahead
Over the last year I’ve worked with brilliant candidates wanting to come into this sector from the worlds of finance, science, event management, tourism and technology. Their translatable skills and life experience would be an asset to any production.
Here in Bristol - I’ve seen brilliant examples of talent from under-represented groups being nurtured; inclusive recruitment practices being adopted; barriers to entry being removed.
But I’ve also witnessed resistance and blocks to meaningful progress. I’ve listened to leaders who are keen to talk about D&I, but don’t seem to be able to sign off budget or commit to contracts that might make the difference between a talented person - from an under-represented group progressing - or deciding to leave the sector completely.
There’s probably not a person in this room, or listening online, who would disagree that creating a more diverse and inclusive industry is the thing we must do.
The business case is also clear - by every metric - diversity is brilliant for the bottom line. The latest McKinsey report details how globally the most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to outperform less diverse teams on profitability. There are many factors that make this so.
As filmmakers you know that to win business and stay relevant to global audiences - the stories you tell and the people who shape them need to reflect the global population in all its diversity and complexity. But amid tight deadlines, budget pressures and the comfortableness of decade-old ways of doing things - changing established patterns can be hard.
It is going to take concerted, consistent effort. You’re going to have to invest time and money in people you don’t know, in training, mentoring and adaptations that you’ve not had to provide before. You can’t expect to see results in this quarter, or even this year, but the results will come.
There are no perfect solutions, just a million small, imperfect ones which together will add up and make a world of difference.
Five Things That You Can Start Doing Today:
Stop using the acronym B-A-M-E.
It’s reductive - it puts the global ethnic majority of the world’s population - into one single group and it really disenfranchises talent who hear that reference when they go for a job. Don’t use it on your job ads or in your scripts. If you want to talk about someone’s ethnicity or racial identity, be specific and accurate, not reductive. If you want to recruit people from under-represented ethnic groups in TV - say that. You can do that by law in the UK - it’s called positive action. But above all recruit based on skills and potential. There are lots of organisations out there who can help you do this really well, who know how to unearth untapped talent. Mine is just one of them.
Write your Access statement
This is a simple document that helps a disabled person know that they can get in the building - before they have even applied for the job.
Imagine each time you send someone your CV having to ask if there is step-free access, a quiet space for screen breaks or an adjustable desk.
Disabled talent is more likely to want to come to work for you because they don’t have to ask these awkward questions and can get straight on with the business of making great films.
Work out your talent and diversity gaps - and act specifically on the most glaring of these.
All UK broadcasters and most international now have specific ED&I targets. Imagine a world where you have done this work proactively, so when talking to your commissioner, you’ve either already exceeded their expectations, or you know what support to ask for to do brilliant recruitment and training.
Pick one grassroots group - and commit to working with them for a year.
Offer mentoring, camera workshops, shadowing. In return you’ll get the best talent from that group and they’ll want to come to you because they’ve seen how you have invested in them. Be consistent. Please don’t ever call up a non-profit randomly and ask them to tell you about their ‘diverse talent’. It doesn’t help.
Write your D&I ambitions into your budget.
The BBC has an £100 million diversity pot to spend on training and talent. I’ve worked with productions who have gone to their commissioners, explained their plan to improve their D&I, and given detailed plans of the training and upskilling which will happen in the lifecycle of that production to make sure talent progress.
A good plan with clear outcomes is really hard to say no to. Especially if you have a long production cycle or a returning series - if you can pledge to upskill talent during that time - Researchers become APs. PMAs become PCs.
Suddenly the pipeline is moving and shaking in the right direction. As for those PMs on the brink of extinction… there will be a resurgence.
We have a resource page packed with useful articles, templates and links to get your ED&I mission off to a flying start.
We’ve come together as a global community this week, to drive the wildlife filmmaking industry forward. To share best practice and to set the ambition for the years ahead.
This just might be the perfect moment to set in motion your talent revolution.
