Our fundraising principles

Music in Hospitals & Care has open channels of communication across a variety of levels within the organisation; the whole organisation meets monthly to share information from all areas of the organisation, with all employees able and welcomed to participate. Channels of communication to the Chief Executive are open to all staff with a regular calendar of informal meeting opportunities. Staff can join a trade union, and we consult with the Musicians Union as required to ensure best practise working conditions for the professional freelance musicians that work with Music in Hospitals & Care.  

The organisation has a staff engagement group and will regularly engage champions or working groups on key aspects of development. We survey staff and our musicians to ensure organisational change is representative of staff and our musicians’ views. We have effective internal communication channels to encourage engagement and participation from staff.  

Our staff and musicians’ recruitment practices are fair and transparent. We advertise staff roles across a variety of platforms externally and internally to reach as broad a talent pool as possible. Most staff roles within the organisation are remote opening up opportunities to people no matter where they live throughout the UK.  

Our musicians’ recruitment process takes place within health and care settings to capture lived experience in the process. We only recruit to areas where we have a demand for live music and offering shadowing opportunities for musicians in specific areas of live music where we can support musicians’ development.

We invest in staff development through ensuring structured discussions and development objectives are in place and regularly reviewed. Where possible we offer secondments for long-term development opportunities. We provide all staff training on common development goals and areas as well as offering many staff access to role-specific training opportunities and mentoring and coaching opportunities where possible.

We do not use zero hour contracts and are committed to paying the real living wage. We regularly benchmark salaries from across the sector with organisations of comparable size and delivery. We pay our musicians above Musicians’ Union national gig and education rates. We are committed to reviewing fees for musicians, and staff salaries on an annual basis.  

We offer an employee benefits package, that currently includes charity sick pay, enhanced maternity pay, a private health care plan and employer 6% pension contributions.

Most staff work remotely and have flexibility around their working patterns. Our annual leave policy allows staff to choose when to take their bank holidays (except for two days over the Christmas period).  

All annual targets and milestones are set by the people delivering the specific area of work to encourage ownership and fulfilment. This extends to social activities. As a remote organisation we utilise online tools for social engagement through regular virtual informal meetings to ensure connection to other members of the organisation and our live music. We also encourage all staff to regularly experience our live music.

All staff are required to commit to the organisational code of conduct and adhere to our organisational policies including those relating to respecting others. This includes our anti-harassment and bullying policy. Staff are entitled to be treated with respect and dignity at work and have a personal responsibility for ensuring that they treat others with the way they would expect to be treated themselves. 

We are committed to ensuring staff have a positive balance for work and family life; we offer remote working for most roles, a large portion of our staff are part-time and many manage their working hours around other day to day commitments to offer flexibility.