Corporate sector gets top talent development award

The first-ever Skillset Company Talent Development Award has been won by CTN, a leading provider of visual communications for the UK’s business sector.
Skillset sponsored the award as part of the B+ Young Talent Awards, held at this year’s Production Show on the London Olympia.
The award was established to reward companies which had developed innovative policies for developing young talent, and who also recognise the importance of this to their long-term business objectives. The other shortlisted companies were: Aardman Animations, BBC Resources, mykindofshow.com Ltd, Picture Canning Company, and Soho Editors.
Dinah Caine, Chief Executive of Skillset, said: “CTN uses a number of innovative learning activities which make use of the internal skills and knowledge available within CTN. These have helped build and improve staff relationships and internal communications. CTN clearly place staff development high up the agenda and this is probably one of the reasons why they’ve grown from 3 to 25 people in recent years.”
CTN's Director of Programmes, Gary Mitchell, said: "We are delighted that our commitment to developing young creative talent has been recognised by such a prestigious award. We know we've got some of the best young talent around - but it's great when that is recognised by your peer group."
CTN uses a variety of innovative staff development methods including mentoring every new recruit and encouraging them to continue their development through external courses, holding monthly workshops to learn skills involving external experts where appropriate, and practical ‘hands-on’ activity and skills transfer programmes.
Skillset, established in 1993, is the Sector Skills Council for the broadcast, film, video and interactive media industries. In 1997, Skillset was one of the first National Training Organisations to be recognised by government and on March 11 2002 was awarded the Sector Skills Council licence by John Healey, Minister for Adult Skills.
Skillset exists to encourage the delivery of informed training and vocational education provision so that the UK's audio-visual industries maintain and enhance their creativity, productivity and competitiveness.
Skillset, www.skillset.org
(GMcG)