Creative sectors urged to ‘embrace flexible working’

Companies and organisations within the culture sectors have been urged to adopt flexible working practices as a way of giving their employees more freedom over when and where they work.

Clare Hodgson of the Guardian has recently canvassed the opinions of industry experts over the concept of flexible working and how it might be applied to the creative industries. She argues that culture jobs are often advertised as part time or full time, but rarely as flexible, which is rather odd considering how well the industry is suited to the practice of working when and where is needed.

Ms Hodgson’s own arts organisation, Diverse City, has implemented a flexible working policy on the back of the success similar schemes have seen elsewhere in the creative industries. However, industry-wide, there hasn’t been as much enthusiasm. “For a creative industry such as the culture sector, we have very uncreative workplaces,” Ms Hodgson argues, adding that the industry may be losing out on the best talent because of the way they choose to recruit.

“Most artists have a cycle of working intensively and then relaxing – and I’d suggest most of us, artists or not, do excellent work for no more than two to four hours of their working day,” she argues. “So working consistently long hours as the leader of a cultural institution is counterproductive. A long-hours culture kills creativity, not only artistic creativity, but the creativity of thought needed to run an organisation or venue.”

Businesses in general have tackled the concept of flexible working much more head on, Ms Hodgson argues, although one could argue that conventional businesses have far more resources at their disposal than other sectors, such as creative and culture.