Labour Market Intelligence is information about a workforce (e.g. age, gender, location, role) that has been analysed and interpreted to make sense of a labour market.
LMI Matters
Good LMI benefits the individual, the educator, the employer and society as a whole. LMI helps develop a skilled workforce with the right mix of skills in response to labour market needs, in a way that promotes job quality and lifelong learning. This supports employability, economic prosperity, social mobility and inclusion. Have a look at out our LMI factsheets to find out more about how you or your organisation can benefit from robust and up-to-date LMI. They are free to download, and we encourage you to use them to tell people why LMI matters!
A sector-wide toolkit
In 2019, Icon partnered with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA), Historic England and Loud Marketing to develop a Labour Market Intelligence (LMI) Toolkit to enable the collection, analysis and reporting of LMI within the heritage sector.
The Toolkit comprises an accessible methodology and survey template that can be used by all professional bodies and organisations wishing to survey the heritage workforce. It facilitates the ongoing collection, analysis and presentation of data on workforce size, composition, skills and trends in employment and education.
The Toolkit enable users to undertake research that can help inform measures for our workforce to be equipped with the right skills and experience to investigate, manage and maintain the nation’s heritage and to fully reflect the society it aims to benefit.
The Toolkit is freely accessible via Historic England. By making the Toolkit open access, we aim to empower heritage organisations to independently conduct workforce research on a regular basis. The Toolkit minimises reliance on external funding, provides a model for sub-sector workforce research and allows cross-referencing and comparison of data that corresponds with both Historic England’s developing approach to LMI and Office for National Statistics methodologies and datasets.
Conservation LMI
LMI is increasingly important as big societal trends (environmental, economic, technological etc.) influence actors within the workforce which in turn impacts the labour market. Icon is therefor committed to promoting the importance of LMI and to providing robust information on the state of working in conservation. This is in support of the sustainability of the wider heritage workforce and development of policy and decision-making affecting the sector.
In April and November 2020, Icon undertook surveys asking conservators to share how they had been affected by the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. The results revealed that the Coronavirus outbreak and associated social distancing measures are having considerable and severe impact on respondents. You can find out more about this research in our news story.
Resources
In 2021, Icon will be undertaking a full labour market intelligence research project to gain a comprehensive understanding of the conservation sector’s composition and current challenges and opportunities facing the labour market. We will investigate things like demographics, skills, qualifications, salaries and benefits. The result will be a new labour market intelligence report free for all members and stakeholders to use.
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