HI Shenette,
This is wonderful to see. Training and support in dealing with conflict and aggression is critically important for front facing staff and also important internally. In our Safety Managment Group we have been organising training and adapting risk logs with regards to fatigue, burnout and aggression on an organisational level. My role includes advocating for Front of House, Box Office, Ticketing Systems, Analytics and Insights and Database teams and there is a lot of overwork, stress and customer negotiation in that team. One of our best active strategies for managing burnout has been to increase support between teams and adjust labour.
In the Box Office and Front of House having empowered managers that can pick up and swap out the load when needed. And an acknowledgment of work done and debriefing incidents. We have an Employee Assistance Program but that doesn't take that place of internal support and care over a longer period. We regularly have training on Conflict Resolution for our Customer facing staff and the focus varies. As we have little staff churn in our FoH team in the last 12 months our training included training on dealing with intoxication. This was also built into business strategy for the commercial operations and venues team when looking at business growth.
If you didn't attend TLCC Orlando this year or missed the talk, I recommend checking out Caleb Roman and Corey Smiths Upgrade your customer service toolkit: Addressing customer rage and using CSIs for patron service management talk.
For the Manager/Exec there are a few things that I've seen that contribute to burnout and can be avoided - the biggest one is someone else's emergency and in so many cases the other party has known this is coming for some time. Having a planned roadmap of upcoming activity can give you a good idea of what overhead you have in your team for taking on additional work. Sales campaigns, build and upgrade testing, training and maintenance are all items that should be predicable. Flex for cancelled shows, illness and injury, and tactical opportunities are things it's worth building a buffer around. Once you have your own roadmap planned as best you can - requesting early requests from the other the teams will give you a feel for what is coming your way. However, one of the most important pieces of armour for your team is protecting turnaround times. I want to help people out as much as anyone, but it needs to be clear what the turnaround time will be. If someone has emergency, other things need to get bumped. Puling an all-nighter to get it ahead will lead to overtime being all the time. If you think that it's very hard to push back on requests from Senior management, you are right. With all good project teams, you need your senior manager (Director) to act as sponsor your team and protect your needs.
Box office can often work under resourced when big events or cancellations hit or in times of illness. Getting through that needs to be acknowledged (by the executive especially) and doing a quick debrief into was anything avoidable. Feedback/debrief sessions are really helpful. They add agency to the team and allow them to be empowered in constructive ways.
The US Surgeon Generals Framework for Workplace wellbeing is a great piece for guidance and speaks of a lot of the above.
The Arts Wellbeing Collectives new Work Well- Guide is a great guide to starting down this path and the conversations to have.
The Black Dog Institute has a good worksheet for self-care.
Neurodivergent burnout is a big and important topic, and different to commonly regarded Workplace Burnout and has different causes, manifestations and recovery.Shelly Binkley (she/her) and I wrote a few articles on it here with some good links. The best starting point for reducing ND burnout is creating a sensory supportive space. Also reducing cognitive load by making instructions clear and simple. Burnout tends to leave folks with limited executive functioning and high distractibility. Plus clarity is just good practice.
In recovering from all kinds of burnout, contact with a community you identify with is key. When we are considering the diversity of our staff groups like ERGs can be very helpful. On the way back from TLCC this year I was fortunate enough to swing by DCs Kennedy Center and talk to the wonderful Barbara Polk and team on their work on employee support and the implementation of their ERGs. There is a little bit in the TLCC recording here. Tessitura have virtual affinity groups as well that meet up regularly.
Thank you for this topic. Beau and Caryl and I got to do our presentation a week ago at another conference so it's front of mind at the moment.