We are committed to our working practices reflecting our values – working collaboratively, championing equity and inclusion, significantly reducing our impact on the environment, and leading change.

In recent years we’ve adopted a number of progressive working practices, including implementing a new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy, developing inclusive recruitment, providing flexible working for our staff, updating our freelance rates, and paying content contributors for their lived experience.

In 2023/24 we undertook a year-long trial of working to reduced and compressed hours. This trial was based on detailed research into the various studies completed on reduced and compressed hours and the four-day week, demonstrating significant benefits to staff wellbeing and productivity.

We also worked with The Autonomy Institute, an external agency with significant experience of reviewing trials such as the UK national 4-day week trial.

Autonomy helped us to analyse and report on our own trial, reviewing areas such productivity, performance, and staff wellbeing.

Trial results

The conclusions were of the independent report were:

  • the trial demonstrated strong evidence for permanent reduced and compressed hours
  • we out performed all our KPIs on membership and engagement
  • our productivity measures demonstrated strong performance from staff
  • qualitative feedback from members showed consistent, if not stronger, performance
  • staff noted the extremely positive impact the trial had on their wellbeing and work life balance, and also on their work and their experience of working at The Museums Association.

As a result, we have now made this trial permanent and we work to a reduced and compressed hours week, with our office closed on Fridays.

Could reduced and compressed hours work for you?

Members who are interested in finding out more about our reduced and compressed hours trial, our approach, our measurement, and our implementation are welcome to get in touch with us on info@museumsassociation.org

We recognise that the Museums Association is not a public facing organisation, meaning that this approach is potentially easier for us to implement than for some of our members. However there are different approaches that have worked successfully for different types of organisation and there is growing volume of evidence from the different trials conducted in this area,

A good starting point is The Autonomy Institute’s report on the four day week trial and follow up report one year later.