I’m not going to put my hand up here and say that people management is easy. It’s not. Humans are such infinitely complex beings all with our own unique nuances, and that’s what makes us wonderful. And, it’s also what can make it hard for leaders to stay in tune with their teams.
When management loses sight of its people, this creates a massive blind spot. This blind spot is a business risk that creates low morale, disfunction and ultimately turnover in teams. This leads to broken cycles of strategic planning, placing stress on others within the organisation and turning progress into reactive back-pedalling. When someone leaves an organisation, who’s picking up those projects? Who’s reaching out to those stakeholders? Who’s making sure that those duties are covered?
Who, in the first instance, has the time and capacity to take these things on in a typical Arts organisation? The true cost of turnover for an organisation in losing a member of staff is far more than just that employees’ knowledge, network and skills. It amounts to dollars, too. More on that, later in this post.
Arts organisations cannot afford this (literally). In my opinion it seems like getting your people right is the number one priority to paving a path to organisational sustainability. Open any page of a strategic plan and I’m sure you’ll find the phrase “to be sustainable”.
If your staff are happy, nurtured, acknowledged and valued not only will this help your organisation maintain stability, it will help develop a culture where staff become advocates for the organisation and help shift broken cycles. It will help a positive attitude permeate outward to your patrons, donors and sponsors and effect energy around your efforts. And, it will help you attract the top talent.
I had the pleasure of connecting with Erik Gensler, CEO of digital marketing consultancy for the Arts, Capacity Interactive, in November of 2018. I was travelling across America from San Francisco to New York to meet with Arts organisations and leaders that I’d been admiring from afar. Before reaching New York, I’d connected with Jill Robinson, CEO of TRG Arts in Colorado Springs who previously led marketing efforts at the Milwaukee and Kansas City Symphony Orchestras. Jill had come to my attention through Erik’s podcast CI to Eye in an episode titled “Our People Crisis in the Arts”. This episode had a profound effect on me and resonated at a deep level, and I suggest you take a listen when you can.
Jill and Erik share a passion for the topic of people and culture in Arts organisations. In the episode Jill says:
“We must be as excellent throughout the institution as we are on stage, or it won’t be sustainable.”
In a nutshell, Jill expresses that if we don’t put the same amount of effort and attention into matters that take place off stage as we do those that happen on stage, then our organisations will never achieve the sustainability they say they’re striving for. We can’t neglect the people that make the art happen, because this has a flow on effect.
At the 2019 Tessitura Conference in Chicago, Erik was a TN Inspire! speaker and took to the stage with a presentation on, you guessed it, creating a people-first culture.
For those leaders whose eyes focus quickly on dollars, turnover is much more damaging to your bottom line than you might expect. Research conducted by the Society for Human Resources Management estimates that “direct replacement costs can range as high as 50–60% of an employees annual salary, with total costs associated with turnover ranging from 90–200% of annual salary”. A 2018 report from the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) asked respondents if their company measured the financial cost of turnover. 17.2% answered “Yes”. 82.8% of respondents answered either “Don’t Know” (19.8%) or “No” (63%).
Do orchestras and our Arts organisations have that kind of money floating around to ignore these matters?
Turnover also flows on to staff morale. When someone leaves a team, it can cause stress on the remaining members. If this isn’t monitored by management, this can lead to increased cognitive burden, decrease in productivity and further loss of staff. In turn, this flows throughout the whole organisation placing stress on daily operations and eroding the bottom line.
In hierarchical organisations, employee dissatisfaction can go unnoticed by leadership. Management structures can get in the way of transparent communication. As Erik mentions in his talk, there are those that “kiss up and kick down” in order to maintain a dynamic (an unhealthy one, by the way). I would also argue that there are those that fail to raise things above their level because they fear leadership doesn’t want to hear it.
The research from AHRI asked respondents what they believed were the most effective strategies for staff retention, with the three top factors being:
- Effective management/leadership (66.9%)
- Positive workplace culture (60%)
- Opportunities for career progression and promotion (42.3%)
The top themes from the qualitative responses sampled in the report, in no particular order were:
- supportive and inclusive culture
- positive and meaningful employee engagement
- transparency of operations and inclusive decision making
- positive, values-based and genuine workplace culture
- flexible working arrangements catering to employee needs
Boiled down to its core, the common threads here are employees feeling valued and included. If you’re reading this, do you have a gauge on how others around you at work are feeling? If you’re a manager, when was the last time you checked in on the challenges that your team are facing and made an effort to understand what motivates them (as individuals) and where they want to go in their careers? This can play a very important role in aligning staff with projects that will engage them and bring out their best.
The people that are in our organisations, are our organisations. By investing in their needs, and by listening to them and having open and honest communication I believe that results can lift both internally and externally. People can feel valued and excited to give their energy to your cause. External results (patronage, marketing efforts, sales, goodwill etc.) will be a reflection of the internal work that an organisation undertakes.
We’re not always going to get it right, but it is important that we try in a genuine and meaningful way. I believe that creating a people-first culture is going to be the underpinning of success for our Arts organisations. Understanding our staff and what makes them tick, and valuing them as the people that get the results is going to go a long way in paving a path to sustainability.
As Arts organisations we have more than enough to contend with externally, so why let poor internal culture add to that.
Resources
Australian Human Resources Institute: Turnover and Retention Report
CI to Eye Podcast: Our People Crisis in the Arts
Erik’s Creating a People First Culture webinar
Kane Moroney 