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Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
HR Priorities, Trends & Practices

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored HR policies, trends and practices at arts and cultural organizations.

Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Board Governance

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored board governance structures and procedures at arts and cultural organizations.

Signature Study
ABA Research Team
The Compelling Employer: Attracting and ...

This season ABA is launching The Compelling Employer, a groundbreaking research initiative examining the employment preferences of arts and culture employees across genres and geographies. This work will build on ABA’s 2022 work on The Compelling Offer. The pandemic may be behind us, but staff acquisition and retention remain core industry-wide concerns. ABA is revisiting this initiative to understand how staff preferences have changed and what organizations can do to attract and retain high performers.

Our Compelling Employer survey uses conjoint analysis (also known as trade-off analysis) to give arts and culture leaders a much clearer picture of what employees want in a job, and what they are willing to trade off to get it. This newly updated survey will seek to understand what staff value in their managers, pay structures, culture and office environments. In addition, we will profile best practices in improving manager quality, shifting to pay for performance, and cultivating culture change from both inside and outside the arts and culture industry.

The Compelling Employer: Attracting and Retaining Arts and Culture Professionals
Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Community Engagement

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored community engagement at arts and cultural organizations.

Signature Study
ABA Research Team
Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing ...

In our post-pandemic arts world, many arts organizations are discovering that most of the patrons that are going to come back have come back already. Even organizations with healthy audiences right now are facing challenging budgeting environments, so the need to build a new base of customers and to increase attendance by casual audiences and visitors is acute.

ABA is deploying a survey of marketing resource deployment, activities and other behaviors in order to assess quantitatively the marketing drivers behind healthy attendance.

Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing Practices that Accelerate Audience Growth

Diversity; Equity; Inclusion and Accessibility

Accessibility Initiatives

As organizations continue to work towards greater inclusion in the arts, we want to learn specifically about the kinds of efforts and investments institutions have made around accessibility for both in-person and digital experiences. Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on the current trends in digital and on-site accessibility.

Audience Diversification

Audience diversification remains a crucial strategic goal for arts organizations as they continue to grapple with questions of attendance, relevance, and long-term sustainability. However, there are a number of tactics arts organizations can implement to try to appeal to broader audiences, and a range of different audience segments one could prioritize. Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on the current state of audience diversification efforts, the groups they are targeting in the more immediate future, and the types of change they have implemented along with results achieved so far.

DEI&A in the Workplace

From the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on underrepresented populations to social movements calling for change in organizations across the world, it is critical to understand how arts organizations are engaging in DEI&A policies internally. Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on peers on concrete changes made within the workplace.