Annual Review 2022: Investing In Our Industry’s Workforce

Alessandra Bellini, President, Advertising Association & CCO, Tesco

The issue of talent shortage is one that impacts upon us all and one I set out for us to actively address during my term as President of the Advertising Association. How does our industry appeal to the very best people from all backgrounds and areas of the UK, how do we successfully recruit them and how do we retain them, nurture and develop them?

These are the questions we must answer as an industry if we are to be successful and to compete here in the UK and on the world stage. Let’s take a brief look at that competition. Our industry is not alone in facing a talent shortage; this is an issue affecting the entire UK workforce. This means we are, first, competing for talent with multiple UK industries across the professional services and creative sectors. We are also competing on the world stage with other international hubs who are offering advertising and marketing services, many with increased momentum post-Brexit. This is no time to be complacent in believing we can easily find talented people – domestic and international – to come and work in our industry. We must be proactive, and we must compete hard.

We have many brilliant people working in our industry and we have to address how we help develop them and further strengthen the talented people that choose to work in UK advertising. Our industry is well equipped with strategic, creative, technical and production capabilities – thanks in many ways to the strengths of the UK’s creative sector – but it is clear that, alongside developing our existing stars, we also need more – professionally skilled and with greater representation at all levels.

These past 12 months, we have formed a Talent Taskforce from across the association’s membership, harnessing the expertise and insights of more than twenty HR professionals across agencies, media owners, advertisers, and tech companies. This group has met regularly to review the work we commissioned of Credos, the UK advertising think tank, to identify the big issues when it comes to talent, and to unpick why these are happening and explore what can be done to improve the industry’s workforce. The results and ensuing proposed actions have been reviewed by the association’s Council and Board during this time. In total, more than 70 of our industry’s leaders have participated in the development of actions for this new workstream.

It is important also to remember this work takes place at a time of huge economic, political, and social change – factors such as the war in Ukraine, the change in leadership at the heart of government and the ramifications of the pandemic (with Covid’s impact still being felt around the world) are all having an effect, directly or indirectly on our talent. As are the big issues we face around climate change, the desire to live in a fairer, more inclusive world and critically, trust in institutions including people’s trust in our own industry’s work.

At LEAD 2023, we will publish our Talent Report – an update on this work. The plan will set out the Credos findings and include a set of actions for the association to focus on as a collective with our members to help recruit, retain and train our workforce. We want to make sure our industry’s talent base is future-fit and equipped to deal with the dynamic pace of technical and social change our industry is experiencing.

Advertising has always been a people business. We can only ever be as good as the people who work in our industry. We must continually strive to attract and inspire the best people we can to join our organisations and invest in helping them to achieve enjoyable and rewarding working lives. This will lead to the best work our industry can produce and, by achieving our goal of improving the industry’s talent base to be future-fit, we can have the most positive economic and social impact on the UK and internationally.

Read more about our Talent Report: Investing in Our Talent’s Future here.

You can download a full copy of our 2022 Annual Review here.