Drew McManus on the Orchestra business | est. 2003

#TBT There’s More Than Musician On Musician Bias Going On

Thu, Mar 3, 2022
Since we’re on a week of HR related topics, I wanted to circle back to a point from Part 2 of the Van Magazine article review. Specifically, the notion that good HR isn’t something that can be pointed at one stakeholder group, it must be top-down throughout the entire organization. For example, the Van Magazine

Find Out Who’s Tuned In To Arts Organizations Today. Spoiler: Those With Email

Wed, Mar 3, 2022
The folks at Capacity Interactive (CI) recently published the latest installment of their Performing Arts Ticket Buyer Media Usage Study. The previous installment was released right before COVID-19 so as I’m sure you can imagine, a lot has changed. I’m still reviewing the content but a few items that jumped out at me from the

An Ounce Of HR Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure, Part 2

Tue, Mar 3, 2022
In Part 1, we started examining several points from  Emma Quackenbush’s article in the 3/16/2022 edition of Van-Magainze.com about how the lack of adequate Human Resources (HR) practices has hobbled the internal culture inside professional orchestras. Today’s installment will continue where we left off as well as considering options for making things better. I was especially glad to

An Ounce Of HR Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure, Part 1

Mon, Mar 3, 2022
For the past two decades, I’ve written about how the lack of adequate Human Resources (HR) practices has hobbled the internal culture inside professional orchestras. As a result, workplace satisfaction, the one thing nonprofit organizations supposedly offer to offset competitive pay, is so bad it continues to be one of the few third-rail topic neither

Employers Behaving Badly

Fri, Mar 3, 2022
Just a short, but poignant, rant to round out the week. Recently, I hired a new contract worker and after their first onboard meeting with one of the software engineers they reached out in Slack with the following query: “I wanted to ask if meetings should also be recorded on my timesheet.” I get it.
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