Dear colleagues:
This question is directed to Human Resources professionals and those in the museum field who have HR among all the others on their hat rack.
Andrea N. Michelbach's (2013: 69-70) research "Are Museum Professionals Happy? Exploring Well-Being Across Domains and in the Workplace" has identified the need for research on museum workers who are leaving their jobs and those who already have left the museum field.
The American Alliance of Museums provides an extensive set of Human Resources Resources on Standards and Best Practices. Among them is an "Employee Termination Checklist and Exit Interview Questionnaire."
The results of this HR best practice in which I am interested relate to those employees who leave their jobs by their own choice rather than those that have been dismissed.
I am in the process of developing a proposal for a conference session that will attempt to bring a panel of HR professionals together so we can begin to mine responses that have been collected under the recommended best practice using the "Employee Exit Interview Form."
Specifically, I am interested in data from responses to the following questions on this form:
I would appreciate it if you would take a few minutes to respond to the questions below. All answers will be held in strict confidence. Thank you. ... [inter alia]
- Why are you leaving?
- Would you describe your working relationship (with respect to both your particular job and your relationship with fellow workers) as pleasant or unpleasant?
- 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?
- Would you care to make any other comments?
If readers of Museum Junction have data, related information, knowledge or perceptions based on your personal experience, or relevant published references in mind, please contact me at paul underscore thistle at hotmail dot com.
I especially would like to hear from any HR professionals willing to participate in a panel discussion I plan to propose for a conference in Louisville, KY during the period 16-19 September 2015. The aim will be to share anonymous data from your exit interview files that would begin to address the need to confirm or disprove what appears to me to be a troubling trend in the museum field and to begin a broad conversation.
I have been thinking and writing sporadically about an unaddressed problem in our field for 24 years (cf. Thistle 1990). I believe that museum workers in the Post-Modern world are particularly at risk of harm because we are "occupational devotees" (Stebbins 2004, ix, 10, 17, 76) who are enthusiastically committed to excellence and love what we do. Relevant research in the general sociology of work identifies potential dangers to physical, mental, family, social, and spiritual health for occupational devotees attempting to meet chronically unresourced increasing (and entirely new) expectations simply by working harder and longer. Consequently, we experience problematic "work intensification" (Bunting 2004, xix, 28, 37 passim; Posen 2013, 321), "overwork" (Mercadex International 2002, 6), resulting "task saturation" (Murphy 2008), "time poverty" (Schor 1991, xx, 5; Schor 2003, 6-11), "stress" (Posen 2013, 2 passim) ), and "burnout" (Dubé 2001, 8-9).
Although many museum workers have anecdotal evidence from their own and colleagues' quality of working life issues, there is little formal research on this problem in the museum context (Thistle 2013, 1, 7, 11).
I am convinced that museum directors who tend to be "hopelessly overburdened" (Janes 2009: 64) and museum workers at all levels need to address the problem of the unhealthy-not to say exploitive (Thistle 2014)-overwork situations that I believe are common in the museum field.
HR professionals' exit interview best practices can help to identify evidence pointing to whether this task saturation and stress problem is of real significance for museum professionals' attention or is not worth bothering with a formal research program on the quality of working lives in museums.
I look forward to participation in and comments on the proposed conference session.
In the meantime, if nothing else, I urge all overloaded stressed out workers to read (or listen to on your commute) the best book for creating a workable strategy to exert more control over your working life: The Power of a Positive No by Director of the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard, William Ury (2007).
Thank you for your attention and consideration.
Respectfully yours
Paul C. Thistle
Reference Cited:
Bunting, Madeline. 2004. Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives. London: HarperCollins Publishers.
Dubé, Philippe. 2001. "View: Towards a New Generic Model for Small and Medium-Sized Museums." Muse 19 (1): 8-9.
Janes, Robert R. 2009. Museums in a Troubled World: Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse? New York: Routledge.
Mercadex International Inc. 2002. Face of the Future: A Study of Human Resources Issues in Canada's Cultural Sector. Findings and Recommendations. Ottawa: Cultural Human Resources Council, 2002 http://www.culturalhrc.ca/research/CHRC_Face_of_the_Future_-_Findings-2002-en.pdf (accessed 29 October 2014).
Michelbach, Andrea N. 2013. "Are Museum Professionals Happy? Exploring Well-Being Across Domains and in the Workplace." A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Seattle: University of Washington. https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/23533/Michelbach_washington_0250O_11485.pdf?sequence=1 (accessed 22 October 2014).
Murphy, James D. 2008. "How to Overcome Task Saturation for Flawless Execution." Peter DeHaan Publishing Inc. www.myarticlearchive.com/articles/5/071.htm (accessed 29 October 2014).
Schor, Juliet B. 2003. "The (Even More) Overworked American." In Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America. John de Graaf ed. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Schor, Juliet B. 1991. The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New York: Basic Books.
Stebbins, Robert A. 2004. Between Work and Leisure: The Common Ground of Two Separate Worlds. New Brunswick, USA: Transaction Publishers.
Thistle, Paul C. 2014. "Museum Worker Overload & the Ethics of Exploitation." Paper presented at the Canadian Museums Association Annual Conference in Toronto, Ontario, 9 April. Available on the Solving Task Saturation for Museum Workers Blog https://solvetasksaturation.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/museum-worker-overload-the-ethics-of-exploitation-final-final-project.pptx (accessed 29 October 2014).
Thistle, Paul C. 2013. "Fully Loaded Camels: Addressing Museum Worker Task Saturation." Expanded and updated version of a paper presented at the University of Toronto Museum Studies 40th anniversary conference Taking Stock in Toronto, Ontario on 24 April 2010 located on the Solving Task Saturation for Museum Workers Blog http://solvetasksaturation.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/thistle-fully-loaded-camels.pdf (accessed 29 October 2014).
Thistle, Paul C. 1990. Little Northern Museum Editorial "Editor's View." Little Northern Museum Scene 38 (August) http://solvetasksaturation.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/littlenorthernmuseumeditorial.pdf (accessed 29 October 2014).
Ury, William. 2007. The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes. New York: Bantam Dell.
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Paul Thistle
Retired
Stratford ON
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