Our policies - Museums Association

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Conference 2024: The Joy of Museums booking open now – Book before 31 March 2024 for a 10% discount

Our policies

The following are our key member-facing policies for how we work. Our wider campaigns, statements, manifestos and responses are all listed here.

Code of Ethics

The Code of Ethics supports museums, those who work in and with them and their governing bodies in recognising and resolving ethical issues and conflicts. It sets out the key ethical principles and the supporting actions that museums should take to ensure an ethical approach to their work.

Nations Policy

We recognise the legislative and constitutional differences between the four nations of the UK and strive to ensure equitable treatment for all members within the UK. Our nations policy sets out the responsibilities of our staff and board to achieve this.

Languages Policy

We operate our day-to-day activities through the medium of English, but there are instances when we support other languages at our events, as well as the translation of some of our key policy documents into other languages. Our languages policy sets out our approach.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy

We are committed to ensuring that as an employer, a service provider and a policy maker we address inequality and exclusion, advocate best practice and act as a role model for the sector. Our equality, diversity and inclusion policy sets out our commitments to this.

Recruitment Policy

We encourage people from diverse backgrounds to apply for roles and we adopt an inclusive approach to recruitment that includes: advertising roles widely; not requesting salary details in our application forms, removing personal data from application forms before shortlising and interviews; sharing interview format and recruitment panel information together with core interview questions with shortlisted applicants one week prior to interview; offering interviews in person and/or online; and providing reasonable travel expenses for attending interviews.

Freelance rates

We recognise that freelancer workers do not receive the same benefits as staff members and therefore add an additional 30% to staff day rates for our freelance day rates.

Payment for content contributors

We are a not-for-profit membership body that runs events and produces content by our members for our members. As such, contributors to our magazine and events do not automatically receive payment for providing content. They do receive a free place at events they are speaking at, and an opportunity to platform their ideas and network with peers.

However, we recognise that many people sharing their lived experiences often do so at a high emotional cost. Examples include Black people sharing their anti-racism work or disabled people sharing their activism. As such, we offer payment to any person who is sharing their lived experience in our content.

Many freelancers wish to provide content to give to the sector, raise their profile, or market their services. But we also recognise the challenging conditions freelancers can work under, and that sometimes they must take time away from paid work to contribute. As such, we consider requests for payment in this light.

Complaints Policy

We are committed to providing a quality service for our members and working in an open and accountable way. One of the ways in which we can continue to improve our service is by listening and responding to the views of our members, customers and stakeholders including responding positively to complaints and by putting mistakes right. Our complaints policy sets this out in detail.

Disciplinary Regulations

One of our many roles is to set and monitor standards of behaviour within the museum community. In order to ensure that any disciplinary investigation of members is carried out in a clear, logical and transparent way, our board of trustees agreed our disciplinary regulations in July 2015.

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Our committees

The committees and working groups that report to our board

FAQs

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