On Wednesday 19th January 2022 the Screen Industries Growth Network published a groundbreaking report "The Time Project - Understanding working time in the UK television industry" a report exploring the hours worked by media professionals.
Working practices, and the work environment, directly impact on issues of diversity, inclusion and inclusion in the industry.
I was asked to write a forward for the report which I republish below:
INTRODUCTION - TIME PROJECT
There are some memories that never leave you.
I first met my wife-to-be in 2002. A few months after we started dating we went on a romantic weekend to Rome. As I sat across from her at a beautiful small romantic restaurant my phone rang - it was work. I took the phone call and started discussing the latest edit of a programme I was overseeing.
My wife-to-be burst into tears.
At the time I was a young series producer, eager to progress my career, and throughout the short holiday I had been taking calls and emails from producers, researchers and my executive producer.
As someone who did not work in television my future wife was frustrated and could not understand how I could be working throughout this supposedly romantic break.
As someone who had only ever worked in television I was unable to understand how I couldn't work throughout this “romantic” break.
Having a career in television can be brilliant, but all too often it carries a cost that we should not have to bear.
I have missed funerals, significant birthdays and key family events.
There have been times when I have gone into the office with a toothbrush and a spare set of underwear, in the knowledge that I might be “pulling an all nighter”. And worse yet I have sometimes told people these things not as a sign of a bad work environment but as a badge of honour.
The truth is these types of working practices have adversely affected my close relationships and affected my mental health. And while I am proud to say that I have won several awards for the programmes and films I have been responsible for, the vast majority of the long hours I have worked have been to produce programmes that were literally forgotten the next day (or following month - if I am being kind).
The Time Project Report confirms what many of us already knew instinctively, that stories like mine and working these types of hours are not isolated cases, and far too many of us have difficulty separating home life and work life.
The report is full of shocking, although sadly not surprising, facts and figures from the number of hours people work on average - 10 hours per day - to the lack of breaks people are able to take - often ranging from just 30 minutes per day to none!
And while these statistics cover the industry as a whole we should not fool ourselves that we are “all in this together”. These working practices impact different people in different ways. They disproportionately impact people with caring responsibilities, pay gaps show that we are not all paid the same for the long hours we work, and people who live outside of London have a harder struggle finding their next job as they literally do not have the time to attend interviews.
This affects career progression and the diversity of who can work in the industry.
We cannot continue to work in this way. And most importantly we do not need to.
These working practices are the result of conscious choices made by people around budgets, delivery deadlines and management culture.
And while I can recount the long hours and bad working practices I have worked under, I have also been lucky enough to work on productions that did not cause me to work these types of hours, to give me decent breaks, and still produce award winning television shows.
As an industry we must do better. The bottom line is while we might use terms such as “long working hours” what much of this report is actually detailing is exploitation. And exploitation must never be normalised.
With the new information that this report has brought to light and the raft of constructive ways to tackle these problems I look forward to an industry that is world beating not just in the product it produces but how it treats everyone who works in it.
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