Commitment

Contrary to the prevailing culture that was present when I started working in the arts, I’ve always had a pretty boundaried relationship with my job. There are a few different reasons for this: I’m pretty rigorous about spending time with friends (as I talked about in this previous post), as a life-long non-drinker some of the usual post-work/post-show going for a drink outings aren’t my natural habitat, and, fundamentally, there’s quite a lot of other stuff I like doing alongside working. Running, singing in a choir, learning some very basic circus skills (which, honestly, I can’t recommend highly enough) - all of these things result in a deadline at the end of the day - a set time to leave your desk and a period of respite where your mind is occupied with something else (such as trying not to seriously injure yourself whilst swinging around on a trapeze). 

I had my first kid during the pandemic, at a time when work and life were intermingled in entirely new ways. And once we’d emerged from the lockdowns and begun to settle into some of the work routines that we’d inhabited before, I noticed something interesting. It was easier to hold these work/life boundaries when there were children in play. ‘I have to pick my baby up from nursery’ brooks no argument at the end of the day. ‘I have to go to my netball practice’ can, in some workplaces, raise eyebrows. 

Photo by Celpax on Unsplash

Of course there are important differences here. A caring responsibility is different to a hobby, activity or social engagement - another person who can’t look after themselves is depending on you to show up, even if, sometimes, you’d rather stay at work. But because of this, it can feel easier to defend a decision to leave at 5pm rather than 6pm - because it’s for someone else. The football game, the cinema trip, the gym class - that’s just for you. And sometimes, you can feel (accurately or not) that others are questioning your commitment - by putting an activity that you’re doing for yourself ahead of your job. 

For me, the question is, what is a reasonable commitment to ask of your team of colleagues? I think this exists on a spectrum, depending on the nature of your job and the industry that you work in. A number of people I know who work in high paid, corporate jobs, would say that the quid pro quo of a big salary is an expectation of complete and utter commitment - that if work calls, no matter what time it is, you pick up. There are other, highly regulated industries, often with safety critical jobs, where your commitment goes no further than the specific number of hours designated on your shift that day - indeed, it would be potentially dangerous to work longer. And then, there is the vast grey area in between, into which the arts sector falls. We’re a sector that, by our nature, isn’t 9-5 - for lots of organisations, our primary business takes place in the evenings or at the weekends. But we’re also a sector that can sometimes slip into the dangerous trap of running on the economy of passion - people working (or expected to work) long hours, sometimes on pretty low pay, simply because they love what they do. 

The reality is, in most salaried arts jobs, there will be moments where our work doesn’t stick specifically to the letter of its contract. If a crisis happens in the middle of a show and there are people that need to know about it, those people are going to have their evening interrupted. Our work does not have a consistent pace throughout the year - because we are constantly making things, there are going to be times when we have to sprint to the finish to get a production / exhibition / concert up on its feet - followed, hopefully, by a slightly calmer period where people can take a bit of time off to compensate. My view is, the higher up in an organisation you are, the more this is part of the deal - if someone’s free time is going to get interrupted, it should be the CEO or Head of Department who’s on a higher salary rather than the administrator who’s likely to be paid the least. But there might be times when everyone’s weekend or evening is compromised, because all hands are needed on deck to solve a problem or hit a deadline - not due to bad management or inefficiencies, but because that is part of the rhythm of the work. 

This may be presumptive on my part, but there will be many jobs in the world where we do not expect every single employee to be passionate about what the organisation does. I can’t imagine that everyone that works in a haulage company is 100% energised and excited about transport solutions. But this doesn’t mean that they won’t do a good job and enjoy their work if the company is well run, if they have a positive environment to work in, if they can see that their work is meaningful and, in particular, if they have a team of colleagues around them that they like and respect. And this last point is the useful one when thinking about what commitment we expect. If, in a hectic production period in the build up to an opening, one person insists on leaving on the dot of 5pm every day when there is still work to be done, it’s likely that that work will simply have to be done by another person, meaning one of their colleagues might be staying til 9pm not 8pm. It’s less about commitment to the art, and more about commitment to the team of which you’re a part. 

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

A positive and transparent team dynamic that encourages this kind of commitment should help everyone within it maintain some work life balance. It acknowledges that walking out the door on time to meet a friend for dinner is as important for wellbeing as a parent making it home for bedtime. It expects, acknowledges and appreciates that there will be times when everyone might need to work a little longer and harder and then can compensate with time off after the team have achieved what they set out to do - which, hopefully, everyone feels proud of. It also acknowledges and adapts to different people’s life situations - whether that be caring responsibilities or health conditions or other factors that make responding to an out-of-hours call difficult - but, crucially, takes into account that there are times when this may put additional pressure on team members that don’t have these commitments or considerations and thinks about ways that this can be balanced out. 

This is our work as leaders - to earn commitment by creating a culture in which it can thrive. We have to accept that some people will feel passionate about what they do and want to commit many extra hours to it (and sometimes our role will be to protect these people from themselves) and, for others, it’s a job that pays the bills and their true passion is playing five-a-side with their friends on a Tuesday night. Both are fine if you’ve got a team where people respect and support each other - and having a workplace that people enjoy coming to is a far better fuel than passion in the long term.