Over the last few years, I’ve spent a vast number of work-related hours thinking about money. How to raise it, how to earn it, how to spend it, whether we’re paying people the right amount, whether we’re charging customers the right amount, whether our income mix is balanced enough. One of the hardest things about leadership in the arts sector (and probably in many others) is the near constant gap between the things you want to do and the things you can afford to do - and, most of the time, it’s a leader’s job to communicate that to people who, rightly, want to have a bigger budget or a bigger salary (or both).
Our sector can sometimes attract people who think capitalism is the root of all evil. Whether or not I agree with them (some days I do, some days I don’t), the reality is that it’s the system that we all live and work within, and, as a leader, I can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, much as I might like to on some days. Consequently, over the next few weeks, I’m going to be writing a mini-series on art and capitalism, asking how we, as a sector, can engage with money and the market in a way that acknowledges reality but stays true to our values.
On her great new podcast Prompt, Jess Branch, a stage manager that I’ve had the pleasure of working with, talks with Les Dennis (that’s right, Les Dennis!) and, at one point, he asks her why she decided to leave the industry. She talks about the challenges of combining parenting with stage management - the evening and weekend work, the feeling of always being on call. But she also talked about how the exodus of backstage talent in the arts sector has impacted the way producers operate, giving the example of how, pre-COVID, if you were offered a year long contract on a show and asked for a couple of weekends off for pre-existing commitments, you’d simply be told no and the job would be offered to someone who was entirely available. Nowadays, this is much less likely to happen, because the pool of people you can offer this kind of work to has dwindled significantly, so if producers want to get someone (preferably someone good) to take the job, they’re often forced to be more flexible in their demands.
This is one of the ways that the force at the heart of our economic system, supply and demand, makes itself felt in the arts sector. In many areas of recruitment, we often have a huge supply of people in pursuit of a small number of opportunities. This is certainly the case with actors, directors and writers, and also for a number of salaried jobs - I’ve frequently read upwards of 200 applications for entry level positions. And yet there are other jobs where it’s incredibly hard to fill a vacancy, usually the kind of jobs where people can easily migrate to other, better paid, sectors - a lot of technical talent has fled into TV and film jobs, a good fundraiser can earn more in another wing of the charity sector, and finance managers have many, arguably less stressful, ways to earn a living, including freelance accounting work. This can result in wild imbalances in pay, with some roles being remunerated far better than others because, without these higher wages, you simply wouldn’t get anyone to do it.
There’s a real danger area here for our sector. There are so many people who dream of working in the arts in one capacity or another, and I think the likelihood is that there are many opportunities that will always be oversubscribed. For companies in other sectors, whose core business is perhaps less intrinsically inspiring, an attractive salary / benefits package, good working conditions, generous time off and a positive working culture are some of the tools that they’ll deploy to get people to work for them and encourage them to stick around. For lots of roles in the arts, people will do the work without any of these incentives - thus risking the slippery slope of employers not putting much or any energy into thinking about how attractive their offer is for a role where, if someone pulls out because they want more time off / higher pay, you can easily find someone else to fill the gap who doesn’t.
Much as we might sometimes wish to, leaders can’t ignore the market completely. If, for example, you advertise for a Head of Fundraising job at a salary level that is considerably lower than other similar Heads of Fundraising jobs out there, you run the risk of very few qualified people applying - which, in turn, may lead to fundraising targets being missed and thus less money for the organisation as a whole to spend on making art. But I do think there’s a lot to be said for applying not only market logic but internal logic to our decisions about pay and working conditions. For freelance positions or workers, industry bodies have rates that we can use as guides - and if, for example, we decide to go above the recommended rate for one role, we can ask ourselves what impact that can or should have on the other roles around it. Similarly, if we have one role within an organisational structure that’s paid considerably more than others who are at the same level, we should ask ourselves why that is - do they shoulder more responsibility? Are they at the top of a pay bracket for those kinds of roles - and if so, under what circumstances could others make their way to the top of that pay bracket? There are no right or wrong answers here, but by asking these questions, we can drill down into the rationale for why we pay people in the way that we do - beyond simply, ‘that’s the going rate’.
I think it’s every leader’s job to ensure that all the people that work in their organisation in any capacity have a brilliant time whilst doing it and go away feeling like they’d be happy to return and would recommend working there to their friends. The arts is a closely networked sector - by which I mean, we like to gossip - and word spreads fast. If you’re careless about how you treat people, others will know about it, and, even though there’s often a lot of competition for one opportunity, you might find that the pool of people that you have to choose from is smaller than you’d like. Encouraging people to stick with you or, for freelancers, to return for another project, allows an organisation to thrive, as it benefits from the experience of its established or returning team members, mixed with the new energy or ideas of first timers.
There’s lots of research out there that suggests we’re starting to see a change in people’s relationships to work, with new generations putting a greater value on the ability to work remotely and flexibly and preserve a sense of work/life balance. If radically increasing rates of pay or changing a salary structure isn’t a practical option at this moment in time, or will take a long time to work towards, considering how much leave you offer, how much flexibility you give your staff, and what positive working practices you can put in place to help people feel connected and happy at work can go a long way. Perhaps the market doesn’t demand it, but it’s likely you’ll end up with a happier group of people who are, consequently, doing a better job. I’d suggest that, whatever the supply, aim to create an organisation where opportunities will always be in demand.