Valuing front-of-house teams

In May, the historian Mary Beard announced on Twitter that she had “fulfilled a life’s ambition” by working a stint as a gallery attendant at London’s British Museum.

“Blimey it is really hard work,” tweeted Beard. “But it gives a whole new perspective and you learn a huge amount about museum visiting.”

Beard’s experience, which was also discussed on BBC2’s Front Row Late programme, is one indication of the growing profile of front of house (FoH) roles in museums.

FoH staff interact with the public face-to-face and directly impact the visitor experience. The most obvious FoH roles are gallery attendants, who have a joint remit to make sure that objects on display are safe and provide information to visitors.

Many people also consider FoH to include roles working in a museum’s reception, cafe, cleaning team or shop, while more senior posts might involve managing a visitor experience team or taking responsibility for wider operational issues such as maintenance and security.

While FoH staff are sometimes undervalued by the museum profession, there’s a growing awareness of the vital role they play in creating enjoyable visits and gathering feedback that can help improve what a venue offers. FoH staff, as the public face of a museum, play a huge role in determining whether a venue is a success or not.

The growth of online and social media has made it easier for people working in FoH to make their voices heard in the wider museum profession – and not all opinions expressed are positive.

Comments on Twitter suggest that many feel overlooked or ignored by some colleagues who work on collections. One curatorial staff member at a national museum tweeted in May: “Last night I worked a front-of-house shift at a museum evening event. Lots of the guests were museum professionals that I know. Every single person blanked me – funny when you put a uniform on.”

Tamsin Russell, the professional development officer at the Museums Association (MA), says that it is not uncommon for people in specialist museum positions, such as curators, to look down on roles in other areas, including FoH.

“Unfortunately, the sector still has a degree of snobbery about whether you’re a museum professional or whether you’re a professional that works in a museum,” says Russell.

This attitude is misplaced, because working in FoH requires a diverse range of skills and experience. Staff need to develop a rapport with visitors and be sensitive to their needs, as well has having the resilience to deal with demanding customers, long shifts and weekend working.

Skills in customer service and retail, as well as an awareness of health and safety issues, are useful, and many museums see these as more important than specialist subject knowledge when recruiting.

Research by the Front of House Museums blog, which focuses on this area of work, suggests that staff in this area are more likely to feel undervalued than other museum workers.

A recent survey carried out by the blog, which was presented at the South West Federation of Museums and Art Galleries conference in July, found that while almost two thirds of museum professionals in back-of-house roles said they felt valued by their institution those in FoH were split fairly evenly on this question.

“I have seen some museums really valuing FoH, and other people feeling not valued,” says William Tregaskes, one of the blog’s co-founders.

As well as feeling ignored by colleagues, other common FoH complaints are not being allowed drink water when on duty (a recent Twitter poll by his blog’s account found that 7 out of 70 respondents were not allowed to carry water or take a short break to hydrate when working on FoH on a hot sunny day) and difficulty taking bathroom breaks (staff are often required to find someone to cover them if they leave their position).

Tregaskes says that FoH staff can also be made to feel excluded in subtle ways such as not having an organisational email address, which can lead to missing out on opportunities.

“In a past role I wasn’t aware that as an employee of a museum I was entitled to training with the local museum federation, and not knowing that limited my personal development,” he says. “I think if all museum professionals had access to a workplace email we might see better access to training.”

The author of the anonymous Attendants View blog, which publishes cartoons satirising life in museums, is in touch with FoH staff on a regular basis. The level of responsibilities for roles varies, says the author, but museum managers often underestimate the challenges involved in doing even the most straightforward FoH jobs.

“Even if you are asking FoH to do the bare minimum, that still needs to be acknowledged as something that has difficulties involved – it’s not just standing around and smiling all day,” says the author. “Even if you have a great day where you’re dealing with great people, that’s still quite a draining job that requires a soft skillset.”

At many venues, FoH staff are also expected to be knowledgeable about the collection, and they may have to lead guided tours or education sessions. The Attendant’s View author says that if museums are expecting FoH staff to go the extra mile, they should be upfront about it, and not exploit people just because they are enthusiastic.

“If you want someone to put on a guided tour, are you providing them with information, or are you expecting them to research it themselves?” she says. “How much goes on around the role that isn’t actually in the job description?”

A number of museums do publicly celebrate the work of their FoH teams, particularly on social media. Two museums in Monmouthshire, Chepstow Museum and Abergavenny Museum, have taken this approach a step further by having Twitter accounts run by their FoH teams.

“It allows FoH to have much more of a voice,” says Tregaskes. “On social media, often museums will show what’s going on in back-of-house, but you don’t see as much about the day-to-day tasks. If they did, I think it would help FoH to feel more valued.”

But giving a voice to FoH staff is not just about effective people management. Museums who don’t involve these teams in their internal discussions are also missing out on a vital source of on-the-ground intelligence.

“If you work in FoH you know where all the clogging points are,” says Tregaskes. “You know what technology works, because you see people engaging with it. You know which parts of a museum people go to and which parts they don’t.”

Janine Derbyshire, the visitor services manager at Derby Museums Trust, says that involving the FoH team in strategic discussions benefits staff and the museum.

“We try to involve the FoH team in all aspects of the museum, so they’ve got buy-in to what we’re doing,” says Derbyshire. “Whenever we have ideas sessions or exhibition planning meetings, we involve different members of FoH. They are the people who are with our visitors on a day-to-day basis. We should be listening to their opinions.”

Derbyshire says that role of FoH staff has changed over time, with the contribution they can make to a positive visitor experience growing in importance compared with their traditional role as custodians of the collection. “It is much more about engaging with people and enhancing their enjoyment of a visit,” she says.

Rachel Mackay, the operations manager at Kew Palace, says that this change has taken place over the past few decades. But a trend (particularly in large museums) to outsource FoH roles to private security contractors threatens to reverse it, with potentially disastrous results in the longer term.

“It might seem like an easy fix for the organisation,” says Mackay, of the museums taking this approach. “But you’re not only taking the [FoH] profession back several decades, you’re taking the people who are the only contact that most visitors have with your organisation and your brand, and you’re replacing them with people not directly employed by you.”

If museums make sure their FoH teams feel valued by setting up good channels of communication and investing in training, working conditions and pay, they will enjoy rewards more valuable than any amount of short term cost-cutting.

“On TripAdvisor, there are as many comments and praise about our staff as our stuff,” says Derbyshire. “I am very, very proud of our FoH team.”