COVID-19 killed our staff morale: How we revived it.
By: K Kapczynski
Tags: Museums, Customer Service, Management, Covid 19, Management And Leadership

In May 2020, after just about 6 weeks of our museum being closed to the public due to the Coronavirus, we reopened back up, naively thinking we had come out of the worst of it. I’ve hinted at our bad morale problems in other articles, but after months of avoiding it, I think it’s time to share this story. I avoided it because reflecting back on this time is not pleasant, and a little embarrassing to admit my initial lack of empathy. But what I learned having gone through it has made me a better manager, leader, and colleague. So I’m ready to share and help you get your team out of the weeds.

Let’s go back to reopening in May. We prepared for visitor tensions, we prepared with safety precautions and online ticketing, and all the readiness we could think of for the visitor experience. We were not prepared for the backlash that soon came at us from our front-line staff only about a month after reopening.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

In preparing to reopen, we had decided to combine our Museum Educators team and our Visitor Services team together. Since we couldn’t do public tours due to County regulations and we weren’t expecting school groups to revisit for awhile, we combined them all together into public facing roles to support visitors throughout their visit. While Visitor Services had primarily been processing admissions before, their role also transitioned into a post-based operation to also support the visitor experience. We had fewer Security Guards due to cost saving measures that disabled the use of contracting services, so some of our new posts were covering roles that they had previously been responsible for. County regulations also required that we have a restroom attendant to monitor how many people were using the bathrooms at one time. Additionally, we could only safely keep one person in the Admissions Booth at a time, rather than 5 that we had pre-pandemic. So for all of these individuals, their job functions had shifted from somewhat unstructured and unregimented roles to post-based assignments with a rotation schedule in a public-facing capacity.

In early summer, I wasn’t even thinking about the staff expectations or even their wishes. We had just come out of a 6 week closure with zero revenue coming in. We struggled (real understatement) but had found a way to keep all of our staff employed and earning a pay check. At a time when I was seeing daily reports of museums all over the world furloughing or laying off staff (and primarily their front-line staff), I was really proud of my museum for finding a way to keep everyone employed. In an American Alliance of Museums article that came out in October, 2020 they said:

“Over half (53%) of responding museums have had to furlough or lay off staff. Overall, respondents indicate that approximately 30% of staff are currently out of work. Positions most impacted by staffing reductions included frontline (68%), education (40%), security/maintenance (29%), and collections (26%) staff.”

I’m not sure what the furlough and lay off rate was back in June, but it was already getting ugly and on it’s way to that 68% marker. So I was seeing all of this play out in other museums and my mindset was just thankful that I still had a job, and all of those who I manage still had theirs.

The front-line staff wasn’t seeing things the same way that I did. I started hearing about poor morale developing. The other Managers (since we combined teams we had started sharing managing responsibilities of the team between myself, the Assistant Visitor Services Manager, and the Museum Educator’s Manager) had started noticing that their staff was complaining because they weren’t happy, weren’t comfortable, weren’t feeling appreciated, etc. It seemed like the root of the problems was that there was too much transition and unease about what was going on in the world around them, and that included discomfort about the shift of their positions at the museum. Very quickly it started escalating until one day when my supervisor was walking through during a morning meeting to get up to her desk and the front-line staff stopped her and in a hostile way listed off their complaints and demands. I wasn’t there, but I heard it was bad.

Side note: I would not suggest ever approaching a conflict at work by confronting a supervisor emotionally, yelling at them, or backing them into a corner. The museum world is small. Very small. So it’s best not to hurt your chances of a good recommendation by acting out of extreme emotion. Rather, wait until you’re calm and have thought through your requests. Ask for a meeting with yourself or the group, and rationally lay things out for them. I also say this from having been in the disgruntled employee seat before. There were times I nearly erupted out of my intense frustration, but I’m happy now that I never acted on impulse.

Anyway, it was clear we had a big problem, and we couldn’t keep the museum open if all of our front-line staff just got so fed up they quit. We also had noticed that the poor attitudes was trickling into our customer service in a big way. We were seeing negative reviews online, and seeing staff out of uniform, on phones, and completely disengaged from their jobs. We had to do something, and fast. The first thing we did was set up listening sessions on multiple days, to make sure we gave everyone in a front-line position the opportunity to attend. That included all the managers and my direct supervisor. In these listening sessions we outlined 5 different areas and told the staff that they could speak about them in any order they wished. These topics included operations, communication, visitor engagement, work reassignment, and our museum’s community as a whole. We asked that they all take turns speaking. Not everyone spoke. There were 2 or 3 really outspoken individuals. A few didn’t say anything and later reported feeling uncomfortable about some of their peer’s remarks, trying to separate themselves from the disenchanted. The managers just listened. We didn’t defend, we answered if a direct question was asked, but we mainly listened and took notes and tried not to make facial reactions to give away our feelings.

Photo by THABANG MADNSELA on Unsplash

Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

That last one was mainly just me. I was so annoyed still, that they weren’t appreciative of having a job, that I went into these sessions irritated and half-hearted. I admit this, because it was hard for me to go through this step in particular. Their complaints seemed so petty in my mind. One complaint was that there were two chairs in one of the positions which they felt invited guests to sit down next to them… I can’t tell you how annoyed I was that they said that. I’m still slightly annoyed today. Just move the chair yourself, what’s so difficult about that? Admittedly, I think their morale frustrations were creating morale frustrations within me. I was angry at them for being so disgruntled in a situation that seemed so out of our control. We didn’t cause the pandemic, and we were just pivoting around it in the best way we possibly could. To the point where I was losing sleep and experiencing some health issues as a result of all the stress. I am being transparent about all this because you might also find yourself struggling as a manager to understand or relate to your team. In the end, I did find that these listening sessions were really helpful for turning the staff morale around. I think just having us be a sounding board for their frustrations was a major step towards recovery.

We took note of what they were saying. Some things they said were hints at solutions they wanted to see from us, some were outright demands. The managers met afterwards and discussed what we really heard from them, and wrote down from lowest hanging fruit to the most difficult/time consuming. The easiest tasks were done almost immediately to show the staff that we not only heard them, but we were acting on it. I moved that second chair the very next day. And things like buying plexi-glass barriers for certain posts and buying additional face shields for every member of staff were done within 1–2 weeks. The harder things, or more time consuming ones were things like writing out a new job description that encompassed their new role, and scheduling one on one meetings with each person and their direct supervisor so they could check-in and talk about how they were feeling, comments, concerns, etc. Those things were completed within 4–6 weeks.

Right around a month or two after the ‘big blow out’ I planned a going away party for one of our interim front-line staff who had been on a temporary contract and had helped us with reopening. I planned a socially distanced party in the Main House courtyard after we closed the museum. I asked people to bring in a dish to share, and not knowing what to expect I ordered a ton of food to be delivered so that if no one showed up, at least I’d have a good spread for her goodbye. To my surprise we had a great showing. The two teams were now talking and inter-mingling together, everyone who came brought something to share, and it was the first time in months that I saw them all at ease with each other and with the situation they found themselves in (as much as anyone can during a worldwide pandemic). I realized that it was also notably the first time in months we had organized any sort of team bonding activity. We hadn’t had the energy to plan anything for awhile, all our attention was on reopening and then on morale issues- and add to that the difficulty of planning socially distanced together-time. I remembered how much team bonding activities help with morale, and help give your team cohesion.

The following month the managers decided to plan for another socially distanced outdoor team bonding activity. This time we created an absolutely amazing site-based scavenger hunt. We talked it up for weeks with the front-line staff. Only about 50% of the team showed up in the end, but the event was a huge success for those who attended. So much so that they talked about it all week with their colleagues and we were asked to plan another one.

Meanwhile my supervisor and I had started discussions about my new fiscal year goals and objectives. We had started tossing around the idea that a customer service refresh was needed in a big way, and not just with my team- but for all staff within the organization. Around the same time, in early October I attended the Visitor Experience Group conference and saw a session presented by Maggie Santoski, Visitor Center Manager at Longwood Gardens. It was a great presentation about the steps that they took to create a fun, exciting, and bonding experiences for their staff with the belief that it would directly impact the customer service that they were providing to their visitors. The Assistant Visitor Services Manager and I both attended and were texting each other the entire time things like “that sounds like so much fun!” and “omg they’d love that, let’s do it” and also “I wish I worked there”. I highly recommend watching it if you’re a manager looking for morale boosting tips. You’ll also catch a glimpse of a remote-work-glasses & comfy sweatshirt version of me asking questions at the end. The presentation solidified the idea for me to focus on a Year of Customer Service in which I would develop a working group that consisted of managers and front-line staff representatives, and we would present regular trainings, create team bonding activities, and work on a system of acknowledgement and rewards.

The working group was formed in November, and I kicked it off with a request that each member watch Maggie’s presentation and report back on ideas that it sparked for them. Together, we created a list of goals and a timeline for achieving them this year. Among our first goal is to put together a holiday team bonding night. Typically I’d be overwhelmed with my regular work load and adding in team bonding activities would just be considered something extra that I could plan or not plan however I saw fit. Having it be apart of my annual goals is actually really freeing, and it has allowed me the time and energy needed to really put focus into it.

Our next team bonding event is our department holiday party next week, so I can’t yet report back on how it went. Staff are already getting excited about it and morale is still continuing to improve. We are still working within the parameters of this crazy pandemic, but for my department, my team, and myself, I think we’ve come out from the worst of it. Here’s to looking forward to what 2021 brings our way.