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This column originated with the idea of covering corporate and educational media writing as a way to support your spec scriptwriting habits. Two recent articles provide insight into the current state of this business.
Dr. Margaret Driscoll, Market Development Manager at IBM Lotus Software, spends hours each month speaking with training and human resource managers. She recently shared her observations with Learning & Training Innovations magazine. Driscoll focused on big picture demographics and how they will shape future training needs.
The first challenge trainers must focus on is "how to develop training strategies to address a workforce that is more age, language, and life-style diverse than ever before. The next wave of learners," comments Driscoll, "will challenge our fundamental assumptions about how, where, when, and to whom we deliver workplace learning."
She also sites U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) forecasting a labor shortage by 2010. Three trends-retiring baby boomers, a decline in births, and anticipated business growth-will create the shortage. The BLS predicts that there will be 10 million more jobs than workers to fill them!
The U.S. Hispanic population is expected to increase 63 percent between 2000 and 2020, reaching 55 million. For trainers, that means programming aimed at unskilled and service sector workers may require dual language versions.
"Globalization continues to increase," writes Driscoll. "In 1975, there were about 7,000 multinational companies in the United States. In 2002, there were approximately 40,000." Workers that need training are located in offices from Palo Alto to India to the Philippines. "In this economy, speed and flexibility are competitive advantages, and training is critical to fostering innovation and increasing productivity. Going forward, training organizations must address the demands of a global workforce and the 24/7 environment in which this group will operate," Driscoll comments.
Another long-time industry observer, Dick Van Duesen, recently reported on the mood at the Communications Media Management Association meeting. Van Duesen notes that "senior communications and training executives are faced with several conflicting conditions that are not likely to be resolved quickly, regardless of how and when the economy recovers."
1. There is an intensifying need to communicate with diversified and fragmented audiences. While more than two million jobs have been eliminated in the last 2 ? years, remaining employees are being scattered into smaller and more geographically dispersed work groups. For companies to stay competitive requires more frequent, more targeted and more effective training and communications.
2. Budget constraints limit access to funds to buy the tools and create the media necessary to reach those audiences.
3. Staff shrinkage reduces subject matter expertise available to initiate and implement media solutions.
4. The pool of media development resources is evaporating because in-house staffs are being cut and outside production companies, both large and small are going out of business.
Van Duesen then points out that "to fill the jobs that do come open, media managers are seeking employees and contract employees and freelancers with multiple skills, particularly in areas of multimedia and website design. As we read it, the ideal candidate should be able to move seamlessly from designing a web page to authoring an interactive DVD to editing a videotape to directing a live remote shoot - all the while having the presence and maturity to interact with senior management and to keep company hours."
Of course, someone must also write content for Web sites, interactive DVDs and videos. The good news is that writers with media savvy are in demand. The bad news is, that the competitive climate is driving down what freelancers can charge corporations for their services. Many companies have cut media department costs by laying off writers. Their near term prospects for landing similar corporate writing jobs are not good. So many former staff writers are now freelancing. With more people scrambling for available assignments, fees are not what they used to be.
Van Duesen sees light at the end of the tunnel, however.
"As we said at the beginning of this analysis, we believe communications media needs are intensifying. At some point, funding to meet those needs will become available. When it does, watch out. The dam will burst with new demands, new projects, and new media. The problem then becomes one of how the reduced staffs and fewer, smaller production companies will be able to serve their eager clients."
When that happens, the market for freelance corporate media writers will become more robust-both in terms of the amount of work available and the fees writers can charge for their services.
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