Given that the most important element of delivering the visitor experience is the visitor-facing staff, it follows that the recruitment of that team will need to be considered with the utmost thought and care. In this chapter, we’ll look at how you can attract great candidates, run a fair and inclusive recruitment process and consider different ideas for selecting your team.

Types of hiring

The first thing to think about is how you will be hiring your team; in other words, the contract they will be on.

There are many types of contracts that you might want to consider, depending on the seasonality of your operation. For example, if staff are only needed over the summer, it would make sense to have a fixed-term contract. However, if needs are more likely to flex throughout the year, it would be worth looking into a mix of permanent and casual contracts. For full-time employees who work shorter hours in the winter for operational reasons, think about annualised hours. This means that not only would they get paid the same all throughout the year, your costs stay even too.

Whatever type of contract is chosen, the important thing is that it works for the business and that it works for the employee. Zero-hour contracts are an example of where, historically, this has not happened. The abuse of zerohour contracts is well documented. An interview published in The Guardian in 2017 reported that zero-hours workers can feel ‘disposable’ and even ‘bullied’ (Williams, 2017). It's true that if used properly these contracts can work for both parties; however, more often than not they can be seen as exploitative, especially if workers are expected to maintain availability without the promise of hours. Museums and visitor attractions have tended to move away from this kind of contract, and instead you should aim for an arrangement that benefits both the employer and the employee.

In the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of museums use agency staff for visitorfacing teams, and even been aware of organisations contracting out the whole department.