Company Culture
Building a well-
rounded team
Liz Young, head of events
at Historic Royal Palaces, on
what it’s like to work at one
of the charity’s six venues
A
“We tell the stories
of our palaces and
show what it is
possible within
them”
t Historic Royal Palaces we are a really
passionate team who have a huge amount
of pride in what we do and the part we play in the
charitable cause. We are also playfully competitive
between the different venue teams which
ultimately helps drive sales, keeps us pushing
boundaries and trying new things. That said, our
culture revolves around support, so we make sure
we offer it across the different venues at peak
times if necessary, as we all know how it feels to
be under pressure. Historic Royal Palaces also has
a Gold Investors in People accreditation, which
highlights our investment in those who work for
the charity.
I love our teams’ commitment to keep
challenging the way we do things and to keep
evolving the events business at these historic
venues. We are faced daily with the responsibility
of telling the stories of our palaces and showing
what it is possible within them. Working with
such a creative team to achieve this is hugely
positive. It’s not often that you get to experience
different departments as part of one role, or even
different venues, but with six palaces to care for at
Historic Royal Palaces, every day is different.
Our main consideration is that all six of our
palaces are day visitor attractions, so we have
to be flexible when it comes to our events to
minimise the impact on our visitors. Sometimes
we have some conservation work taking place,
so that pushes us to think creatively to achieve
their vision. Generally though, clients are very
understanding and interested in our conservation
work, as they know that they are helping us
reinvest our funds back into preserving the
palaces for the future. We have even made the
most of this in the past and arranged for event
trade journalists to view the restoration work on
the Rubens ceiling at Banqueting House. Luckily,
they had a head for heights!
HRP takes work/life balance really seriously and
we make an effort to be flexible across the teams,
in order to support everyone in busy periods.
Our managers take care to allocate events evenly,
and this applies to weekend events too. We have
flexible working, and the events team make use
of this. While we all work normal office hours,
we make sure that we allow the team time to rest
after an evening event; for example taking time
off in lieu. HRP also has a wide range of internally
produced e-learning modules and other career
development courses, as well as the opportunity
to do placements within other departments to
learn new skills.
In the events industry there has been a
significant shift towards an acknowledgement
of the importance of a work/life balance. There
will always be a need to work late and sometimes
long hours on events, but there has been a rise
in awareness of the general need to protect staff
from over-working.
My advice to anyone starting out in the
events industry is that, above all, you need to
maintain both a sense of humour and a sense of
perspective. You need to keep a calm head amidst
the chaos, keep positive and motivate yourself
and others to produce positive results. Work hard
and perform to the best of your ability, ensuring
people will not only remember you, but they
will want to work with you again. Build good
relationships with clients and colleagues as you
will need their help and support regularly.
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