Staff must be flexible says Thompson

Ariel: 12 October 2005

Staff will need to be both open-minded and flexible if they are to survive at the BBC, the director general said.

Speaking at yesterday's Q&A on the licence fee settlement Thompson told staff: ‘The days are gone when you could join a local radio station in the 1960s and leave in the 1990s and your job changed very little.'

He was responding to concerns about the impact of self-shooting and self-editing on BBC productions. ‘For series like Bleak House there will always be room for people with brilliant craft skills, but our business is moving forward. We are looking for people with a cluster of skills who can be flexible.'

Those who were not flexible, he added, will have a hard time, not least because 'the way we work will change every three to four years.' But he said that those joining the BBC now faced a more creatively exciting time.

‘When I joined in 1979 the roles were strictly segregated. I would have killed to try editing and shooting,' he said.

He acknowledged that staff were currently living through a ‘big bang' of change at the BBC but promised that things would feel different in the future, with efficiency gains set at two percent per year.

‘The value for money environment is not going to go away. There's been a tendency in the past to go for value for money in panicky bursts and hold our breath until things go back to normal.

‘But if you go at it in a long term way and make small, real improvements each year it feels much more gradual, much more part of the way of working.'