Decent Work in Arts & Culture with Kate Cornell

TRANSCRIPT:

“We are all living through these tumultuous times, and we absolutely need to have compassion for one another in a decent workplace.”

Let's talk about decent work. This is a High Five for creative entrepreneurs and arts leaders, and I am so happy to have Kate Cornell with me today. Kate is Principal consultant with purposeful and an independent consultant on government relations, project management and all sorts of other very cool things. And today she's going to share with us her thoughts about decent work. Welcome, Kate.

Thanks so much, Heather. I'm really happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you. So what is the first thing that you'd like to share with people about decent work? Well, I have been reflecting on decent work for many years now, and, I was working with the small startup after meta, which is our platform for survivors of workplace sexual harassment. And I had the privilege of getting some incredible training. So I want to share with you five really important learnings on decent work.

So the first one is flexibility.

We have a huge problem in the charitable sector and especially in the arts sector with retention. And it is absolutely essential that we create those workplaces that are compassionate and that are flexible. And sometimes that means allowing for your workers to drop off their kids and pick up their kids from daycare. And sometimes that means work from home, and sometimes that means the four day workweek. And we're seeing in different workplaces how that is, transpiring and developing. And there are some really great best practices out there. So that's number one flexibility.

Number two is training.

So often - and I did it was when I was an executive director of the Canadian Dance Assembly - we cut professional development in our budget. If if times are tight, professional development gets thrown out the window. And I'm here to tell you, please don't do that. Training is absolutely pivotal for retaining your workers. It's absolutely essential for moving your organization forward. And even as a consultant, training is what keeps us motivated and what keeps us engaged in and in innovation and in just keeping our sector on the edge. And so, I would really encourage training and cultural competency in anti-bias and anti-oppression. I would encourage training in trauma informed approaches as well.

Number three, I want to talk about health benefits.

I have heard from so many executive directors across the art sector. I can't afford health benefits. I just I can't do it. And so we're not going to offer it to our full time employees, let alone our part time employees. And there is a hack of the, insurance industry that I want everybody to know about. And it is called the health spending account. You don't have to have full time coverage of absolutely everything under the sun for only your full time employees. Even as a small organization with less than three employees. You can offer a health spending account and it is compassionate. It is the right thing to do, especially for our equity seeking workers, for our workers who are part time doing many different gigs. It is absolutely a game changer in how you treat your employees and how you value their mental health. So that was number three.

Number four is, of course, the dreaded salary, the the actual monetary amount that you pay in a decent work environment. The living wage here in Toronto is maybe, about $25 an hour or $26 an hour. I would like to introduce you to the center for Policy Alternatives. And many researchers out there are talking about the rental wage and the rent wage in the city of Toronto. It's $45 an hour. And I want you to think of, for those leaders of organizations, do you want your employees to have their own apartment? Do you want your employees to be able to live in the GTA area?

There is so much advantage to looking at the importance of retaining your employees, of not losing them every six months and being in a constant hiring cycle and actually paying them a wage that is equal to the cost of rent in this lovely, enormously expensive city. And then finally, fascinating. Yeah, I hadn't heard the difference between the living wage and the rental wage.

What an incredible distinction. Thank you. So number five is compassion. We are all living through these tumultuous times, and we absolutely need to have compassion for one another in a decent workplace. And that can mean walking someone to their car. It can mean, being understanding about deadlines. There are so many ways that we can be more compassionate leaders and more compassionate coworkers within the sector. Again, I'm going to say trauma informed training changed the way that I work in the charitable sector. And, it's something that I just highly recommend for absolutely everyone. I've had just an amazing opportunity throughout the sector to work with lots of incredible leaders. And, I'm really happy to share the those top five learnings with you, Heather.

Thank you so much, Kate. How can people connect with you online? People can find me as the principal consultant and our lovely, small, firm, purposeful. The web address is wearepurposeful.ca. We work in fundraising. We work in project management. We work in government relations, and we're supporting several different charities. Yeah, as fractional clients as well in projects and I also just wanted to highlight, for people who want to know more about the decent work movement, Ontario not for profit network is the absolute leader, not just in Ontario, but in the rest of the country as well. In decent work, they have a whole section to their website that is focused on decent work and has checklists and really, really great resources. I would highly encourage employers in the sector to go to. Oh, and, and, and check out those free resources. Thank you so much. Great, great resources and direction for people. So for everybody watching and listening, of course, I'm sure this is going to generate a lot of comments and we'd really love to see what your thoughts are about decent work in arts and culture in Canada.

Thank you so much for joining us for an episode of High Five. Come back next week. We'll have another guest and a new conversation for you. See you then.