HR

Looking For A Way To Chip Away At The Us vs. Them Walls?

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The idea would have never occurred to me in a million years but if you’re looking for a legitimate initiative to help build positive connections between stakeholders, be sure to check out something the Wichita Symphony rolled out a few months ago. Spoiler: they designed an improv workshop. Attended by a cross section of a dozen board members, managers, and musicians it produced worthwhile results. The program was initiated by the …

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

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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 article focuses exclusively on musician-musician troubles but there one example in particular I wish the article …

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

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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 see Quackenbush highlight how the large donor-driven revenue model impacts workplace culture and satisfaction. While I …

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

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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 nor musicians’ unions want to touch. So you can imagine how gratifying it was to …

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Employers Behaving Badly

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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. And at the same time just hearing the question is heartbreaking. What’s worse is contract workers …

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