How can the events industry help with the shortage of Conference Producers?

The UK conference and meetings industry is worth a whopping ￡20 billion annually across the estimated 10,000 UK venues, so it’s no surprise that 84% of businesses say that attending conferences is an important part of their marketing strategy. (Imago Venues, 2024).?With statistics like that, it is no surprise that conference production is at the forefront of the B2B Conference & Events companies.

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What is a Conference Producer?

Conference Producers identify topics of interest through in-depth market research to ensure they create a commercially viable event that will add value to its attendees through networking, seminars, delegates, sponsors and speakers.

The role of a Conference Producer is a multifaceted position as the individual is responsible for their event from inception through to delivery. This includes working with all internal teams such as sales, marketing and operations as well as managing external contractors and specialists to ensure the conference is a success.

Typical tasks and responsibilities of a Conference Producer can include market research and analysis to identify the target audience and find out what industry topics they want to see, identifying high-level and influential industry experts to attend and speak at the conference, writing promotional copy for the conference programme and sales materials in the relevant language for the conference audience, project management of the internal teams and external agencies and attending the conference to ensure excellent delivery and smooth running of the day.

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Why is there a shortage of Conference Producers?

Conference Producers are sort after individuals whose positions within their company tend to be very secure as they form part of the backbone of the event organisation process. In addition, the roles tend to be well looked after with inflated salaries, bonuses and great benefit schemes too, which in turn means there is often less drive for current Conference Producers to move on to new pastures.

“There seems to be less of a drive to get fresh graduates into roles; clients are wanting a like-for-like candidate and rarely even consider someone stepping into the industry with equally transferable skills.” - Megan Mitchell, Senior Account Manager & Team Lead at Live Recruitment

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What can the industry do to help combat this?

Junior talent is a great starting point to help combat the shortage of Conference Producers; the role is desirable and many candidates in the market for a new role hold many skills that are transferable to the conference sector.

“Conference production is a desirable role; if companies were to provide more graduate programmes supporting the set up into these positions from degrees like research, journalism and sector specific degrees we would have more conference producers to bridge the talent gap” - Megan Mitchell, Senior Account Manager & Team Lead at Live Recruitment