Paul C. Thistle, (former) Director/Curator, Retired

Proposal Type: Roundtable

Seeking: Additional Presenters, Specific Expertise,General Feedback and Interest

Abstract: At issue is the quality of working lives in museums & archives. Because archives & museum practitioners are committed to excellence & typically are “occupational devotees” who love what we do, we are particularly in danger of succumbing to the current “more with less” culture. We over-commit, overwork, & over-function to the detriment of our physical, mental, family, social, & spiritual health. In the absence of significant formal research on this issue, we can begin to investigate the problem by mining anonymous data already collected by HR professionals who administer ‘best practice’ exit interviews.

Seeking: The most immediate impetus behind my proposal is the recent MUSEUM-L discussion looking for data on museum employee turnover [before logging in, found at http://home.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-HOME.exe?A0=MUSEUM-L & after log-in search”turnover”]. Also see the Solving Task Saturation for Museum Workers Blog at https://solvetasksaturation.wordpress.com/ for analysis of quality of working life issues in the field.

Among Human Resources “best practices” recommended by the American Alliance of Museums is an exit interview for staff who are leaving their positions. Among some other relevant questions asked are: Why are you leaving? & Are there any particular practices or working conditions that either led to your decision to resign or that you feel are detrimental to a satisfactory working relationship? If so, have you any suggestions on how to eliminate them?

Recent research in the UK by Nicola Sullivan (2015)“Museum Professionals Have to Meet Higher Demands Due to Cuts.” Museums Journal Museums Association, UK http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/06052015-staff-stress (accessed 14 May 2015)reports that 65% of survey respondents say that increasing stress has become a major issue in the field.

This session will mine existing museum HR best practice data on reasons given by staff for leaving work to attempt to begin to measure the ratio of museum workers who cite such quality of working life issues such as rising–yet unresourced–expectations, task saturation, time poverty, overwork, stress, & burnout for leaving their jobs.

The aim of this session is to improve the work/life balance in our field. A necessary step toward this goal is to see if any anonymous evidence exists in existing HR exit interview files that will be useful in identifying the need to carry out large-scale research on the quality of working lives in museums & archives.

If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: Paul C. Thistle,paul_thistle[at]hotmail.com

If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.

All feedback, and offers of assistance, should be submitted by July 3, 2015.

Related Topics: Archives, Human Resource Management, Museums/Exhibits

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.