New Skillset survey seeks employee perspective on training

Journalists and freelancers are being given a chance to have their say on training needs in the UK publishing industry, as part of a new employee survey launched by Skillset.

This is the first time the publishing sector has been incorporated into the main Skillset research programme, following a series of focus groups held in 2008. The company has also already completed a survey of employers in the publishing industry with the results expected shortly.

The new employee study asks questions relating to the skills of journalists and those they feel are missing. It also features a section dedicated to the freelance journalism community, asking a range of questions from how many days of work they get a week and trends in working patterns to how freelancers hear about jobs.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Skillset's publishing sector manager Suzanne Kavanagh said the survey aims to hunt out skills issues for all journalists in order to help make immediate improvements based on need.

"We want to get to the actual issues, more qualitative than the quantitative headline, statistics and facts that we already have," she said.

"We have the employer perspective, but they will have different issues, such as training budgets and staffing issues. So we also need the individual's point of view. We want everyone's experiences so we can use the data to look at what the skills are. We can then start seeing where gaps and shortages are. There has historically been a few studies into the publishing industry. There has been things here and there but not something coherent across publishing for a long time."

"It's a big ask for people to spend their time answering surveys but the results can directly benefit people who take part," she added.

Previous studies by Skillset which prompted immediate changes in the industry include the journalism national occupational standards project in April, which saw the merging of standards for broadcast, print and online journalism as a result of the findings.

Publishing sector employees have until the end of September to complete the survey and the results will be made public at the end of the year.

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