Staff Planning, Recruitment & Training
The success of any audience experience will rely on a dedicated and enthusiastic staff team, committed to providing world-class experiences. Excellence must run through the core, with every staff member having the skill to deliver their role to the best of their ability, within a clear organisational framework.
We have recruited, trained and developed staff across departments, at every level, whilst working in national museums, science centers, temporary experiences and travelling exhibitions. This first-hand experience has enabled us to offer a specialist recruitment service and deliver impactful training programs, designed to build capacity, confidence and competency.
The most important question for any organisation is what type of workforce it will need. Once this question is answered, the organisation can focus on recruiting, developing, motivating and retaining the number and mix of employees that will enable the organisation to grow, mature and deliver an excellent visitor experience.
Staff Training
For many of our clients, there is not a developed museum and science center landscape in their immediate vicinity meaning newly recruited staff have little reference points or best practice examples to follow.
Our training techniques are rooted in our understanding of how people best learn – through active participation, engagement and a mix of sessions that stretch, give context and build knowledge, skills and motivation. The result is a well-informed team, armed with the techniques to deliver and the will to develop and improve.
Every training package is tailored to the needs of the organisation. Training is offered as an organisation wide service, or as a combination of modules. The length of the modules are dependent on the number of staff being trained, the prior experience of staff and the importance placed on developing certain skills and techniques.
Training can be delivered pre-opening, or support the development of an up and running destination to support the development of new skills and improve performance.
Example training modules
For Leadership and Management teams
- Leadership in Museums and Science Centers: The role of the director and department heads, strategic planning, techniques for developing a vision orientated working culture.
- Building teams: Recruitment, staff development and developing capacity.
- Business planning: Planning for and enabling financial sustainability.
- Capital projects.
For Experience Developers
Planning new experiences:
- Creating new destinations and exhibitions: From forming the project brief through to delivery.
- Exhibit development: Exploring different types of exhibits, how they are designed, and how they should be maintained.
- Audience development: How to create an audience development plan.
- Retail planning: The process of product development, retail and stock planning.
- Evaluation techniques: Methods for front end, formative and summative evaluation to inform the development of new content and experiences.
- Future proofing experiences: Ways to refresh and renew delivered experiences to remain relevant and encourage repeat visits.
Content development
- Making difficult subjects accessible: How to use tone, language and context to make complicated or remote subject areas engaging for a nonspecialist audience.
- Refreshing content: Skills for researching and interpreting content to refresh the visitor experience.
- Effective text writing: Techniques for writing accessible and engaging text for exhibit labels.
Visitor programs & resources
- Developing visitor programs: How to develop engaging shows, workshops and other programs designed to make learning accessible and engaging.
- Developing resources: Techniques for developing learning resources for use before, during and after visits for visitors and for educators.
- Teacher training: Developing training programs for educators that help make learning accessible and engaging.
- Developing activities for young children: Understanding how young children learn, and devices for engagement.
- Developing Lates events: Creating high impact, diverse evening events for adults.
- Developing sleepover events: Planning, running and evaluating sleepovers in a destination.
- Outreach planning: Strategic outreach planning and routemaps to delivery.
Educational Programming & Development
Well crafted and delivered programming can bring learning to life, and life to learning. Often participatory and always engaging, great programming succeeds in delivering a memorable, high impact experience that covers different areas of content, appeals to different learning styles, and engages different audience types. Activities can be designed for participation within a museum or science center, or form part of an outreach program that travels to schools, communities and festivals.
Any visitor programme must be professional, engaging and celebrate the values, vision and mission of the institution. Programming should be bespoke and developed in close consultation with the client. Many of the core team have led the field in introducing new activity formats in museums and galleries – from children’s sleepovers, to adult Lates programs to provision for disability – which have been replicated across the industry.
We have experience developing:
- Tours
- Workshops
- Summer camps
- Family days
- Science shows
- Storytelling
- Demonstrations
- Pop-up activities
- School roadshows
- Outreach programmes
- Online education activities
The above programming can be adapted for children of any age, school groups, adults, families and people of determination; this can range from object-handling for those with visual impairments to sensory activities for people with learning disabilities.
Operations Management
With a background in running national museums and science centers, the Talents UAE team offers operational planning services for both existing and developing experiences. We have provided our services for museums, science centres, visitor attractions, Expo’s, pavilions, olympic events, travelling exhibitions, festivals and outreach programs. An operational plan is a blueprint for running a destination, event or program. It describes how it is run in its different modes, establishes clear protocols and procedures, details lines of communication between staff, and articulates an organization’s commitment to both teams and visitors.
An operation plan typically includes:
- Admissions
- Management during different operational modes
- Visitor management
- Staff management
- Daily museum procedures
- Health & safety
- Business continuity plan