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"Work Attitudes" in the Arts Sector: Lessons Learned from ABA’s Compelling Offer Survey

May 2022

 

In March-April of 2022, ABA deployed what may be the largest survey of arts staff ever conducted.  With 51 organizations participating across the US, Canada, UK, continental Europe, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, we had approximately 1500 completed responses to our extensive survey asking staff to describe the trade-offs they are willing to make for their ideal job.  (ABA members, we will be sharing the final results starting in mid-June.  Contact your member advisor to learn more.)

In addition to asking a series of conjoint questions to understand staff tradeoffs, we asked some questions about their ‘work attitudes based on  a study conducted by Bain and Company and Dynata.

Bain constructed a 10-dimension framework of attitudes, building off the existing literature in motivational theory and psychology. The 10 dimensions are:

  • Work centricity: How much of my identity and sense of meaning comes from work?

  • Financial orientation: How much does my level of income impact my happiness?

  • Future orientation: Do I prioritize investing in a better future or do I focus on living for today?

  • Status orientation: How concerned am I about being perceived by others as successful?

  • Risk tolerance: Am I willing to take risks to improve my life if I might end up worse off?

  • Variety: Do I prefer change or predictability?

  • Autonomy: How much do I value being in control of my own work?

  • Camaraderie: Do I see work as primarily an individual or a team effort?

  • Mastery: How much satisfaction do I find in the process of perfecting my craft?

  • Self-transcendence: How important is it to me to make a positive difference in society?

We tested these the same way that Bain and Dynata did - by asking survey-takers to pick which of two statements best described them.  For “work centricity” for example, one side had the statement “My work defines me,” while the other side had the statement “My life outside work defines me.”

Want to find out how you would score? You can take the Bain survey yourself here.

Bain found significant variation in scores on all 10 dimensions in all 10 countries covered in our research. In their words, “thinking about what the average worker wants from a job no longer makes sense in the modern economy.”

 
 

ABA Results

 

We looked closely at how arts staff from many departments and countries varied in their responses to these questions and, in contrast, found remarkable consistency across the arts.  We looked at the arts as a whole, then broke it down by genre, region, department and age.

 
 
 
 

Top Attitudes Consistent Across All Groups

 

Consistently, the strongest two motivators for any group were either self-transcendence (“making a positive difference”) or camaraderie (“work is a joint effort”).  These tended to be first or second and very close in all groups.  

The groups with the strongest tendency toward self-transcendence were, perhaps unsurprisingly, the education and community engagement department and the C-suite.  Also, those from the baby boomer generation were more likely to look for meaning in work.  Among genres, ballet had the strongest self-transcendence scores.

The strongest group to recognize the nature of work as a collaborative effort was those working from Europe, again with CEOs close behind.  Theater and museum staff had the strongest inclination toward camaraderie, as between genres.

Again, with remarkable consistency, the third strongest score was for financial orientation.  Across the board, recipients believed that “more money would make me happier.”  Particularly in Asia and museums, this inclination was strong, as mentioned earlier.  Interestingly, marketing actually agreed with this statement more than development.  Generally, the younger an individual, the stronger the financial orientation.

 
 

C-Suite Looks Different

 

To the extent there was one group that looked different from the others, it was the C-Suite (defined as the top executive in various departments as well as the CEO/artistic director). While top executives also had strongest scores around self-transcendence and camaraderie, they cared significantly more about autonomy and risk-taking, and much less about money.

 
 
 
 

Generational Attitude Differences Are Real

 

When discussing changes in workplace attitudes with members, we often hear about the different needs for different generations.  The Bain study also found that the importance placed on work relative to leisure has declined across generations, consistently.  No surprise, our data found the same.  

Again, the top attitudes are around self-transcendence (“making a positive difference brings meaning to my life”), camaraderie (“work is a team effort”) and financial orientation (“more money would make me happier.”  Behind these, you see big differences – younger groups have less work-centricity, less interest in taking risks, more focus on status, and much stronger mastery scores (believe that “expertise is an end in itself” rather than “a means to an end”).

 
 

We found that generational differences were some of the most striking sub-group analyses in our survey overall, particularly in the conjoint sections. ABA members, make sure to catch our webinars in mid-June revealing the results and stay tuned for your personalized results later this summer if you participated in the survey.