Tate’s vision for 2015 – Tate Next Generation – depends heavily on the talent and hard work of our staff. In the past year, we’ve restructured and strengthened our central senior management team to give us the foundation we need to reach our long-term goals.
In March 2007, we published the results of an employee survey. A key theme emerging from this was the need to equip our managers with the skills they need to fulfil their roles effectively. One of the ways we’ve addressed this is through our Tate Manager programme, launched last spring. This programme is aimed at new managers or those who have not had formal management training. It is tailored specifically to Tate and has been designed to respond to the challenges Tate Next Generation presents. So far we’ve run the programme twice in London and once in Liverpool.
Tate has also taken part in the Clore Leadership Programme’s two-week residential courses, designed for people in the middle ranks of larger cultural organisations. This complements our in-house training and we aim to have Tate participants on all of the programmes planned for the coming year.
Three people came to Tate in the past year through the ‘Peach’ placement strand of the government-funded Cultural Leadership Programme, working on projects such as sustainability and workforce development. These six-month placements allow emerging and mid-career leaders to share and develop their skills by shadowing a leader and working on key projects within an organisation.
Tate recognises the need to encourage learning and development for staff across the organisation. We’ve done this by extending our popular Learning Bites programme, which provides short learning sessions on a range of personal development topics.
We’ve also continued to invest in improving pay levels across the organisation. By working closely with the Staff Council, we’ve been able to launch a bike loan scheme for staff, and made significant improvements to canteen facilities at our London sites. As a direct result of feedback from the employee survey, we’ve also focused on the quality of our working environment, and have made some much-needed improvements across all of Tate’s sites.
