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How the National Theatre use Culture Shift to drive Culture change

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The National Theatre entertains global audiences, making world class theatre accessible to everyone, everywhere. Every year, they employ thousands of people from writers to chefs, engineers to artists, and typically one third of their workforce are freelancers.

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As one of our most respected cultural institutions, The National Theatre has taken deliberate steps towards creating a safer working environment for everyone, with greater transparency and learning to reflect their belief that everyone who walks through their doors should feel safe and respected.

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Their mission to drive cultural change, led them to embedding Culture Shift’s Report + Support platform in May 2025. With Report + Support in place, they’ve been able to reshape reporting processes and use data as a guide to cultural change, whilst also driving other important and exciting culture change initiatives which we explored in our recent webinar ‘Changing the Script’.

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Sector background

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The creative sector has long been admired for its imagination and influence, yet it has consistently struggled with deep rooted cultural issues around safety, power and poor behaviour and allowed harmful behaviours to embed themselves over decades.

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The Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority’s, (CIISA) ‘Building the Foundation’ 2024 report highlighted how serious the situation is with almost half of all people working in the creative industry saying they’ve experienced bullying, discrimination or neglect. People described harmful behaviours as something that is still treated as part of the job or excused because of someone’s ‘creative genius’. Many freelancers talked about being labelled as difficult and the possibility of losing future work if they spoke up about poor behaviour.

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Driving cultural change at the National Theatre

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Post-pandemic saw three main drivers for change for the National Theatre:

• The experience of freelancers experiencing the sector
• The experience of Front of House staff
• The development of the CIISA Standards

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In response to those three key drivers they:

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• Setup a freelancers working group – The National Theatre wanted to understand the experience of the freelancers that they were employing and what they could do to help them. The freelancers working group wanted to better understand how they could report and what happens to them if they report? The National Theatre therefore wanted to establish how they could encourage their freelance workforce to speak up and methods to do this.
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• ‍Launched their ‘Everyone is Welcome’ front of house campaign – At the same time, in response to the pandemic they launched their ‘Everyone is Welcome’ for their Front of House teams which introduced a statement and policy that is embedded across the National Theatre from the moment you come through the door, to every ticket that is aimed at promoting safety for everyone – whether that was ‘please put your mask on’ through to challenging micro-aggressions.
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• ‍Introduced Culture Shift’s Report + Support platform – the National Theatre’s Director of People and Culture, Laura Friedner was part of the group who set up the CIISA Standards. A key pillar of the standards is having open and accountable reporting mechanisms, and they wanted to lead by example - which led them to Culture Shift.
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How the National Theatre embedded Culture Shift to drive cultural change

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Aligning policies and processes

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Launching a new reporting system isn’t something that should be done in isolation. Alongside the launch of Report + Support, the National Theatre revamped their policies and processes, in particular their Dignity and Respect at Work policy to align with their ‘Everyone is Welcome’ campaign.

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They recognised that most people just want the poor behaviour they’re experiencing to stop and are out off by raising a formal grievance or attend a hearing, at which point it is difficult to repair a relationship. By revising the language and process around speaking up and where appropriate redirecting people to report via Report + Support has helped to change the culture around speaking up.

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“We’ve done a lot of work around changing the language and process we use, instead encouraging people to just tell us what is happening and then we will take these actions, and they will look like this. By focusing on ‘just tell someone’, we have demystified the process and prevented things from happening before they turn more serious.”

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Their policies also clearly set out standards of behaviour and empower everyone to challenge poor behaviour. There is no one rule for talent, one rule for everyone else and that includes whether you’re a freelancer, contractor or staff member.  
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Tailoring reporting routes

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When launching Report + Support, The National Theatre also utilised their intranet to drive uptake. They created a Staff section and a Freelancer section with clear call to actions on both to report unacceptable behaviour, along with their ‘Everyone is Welcome’ policy, training and how the reporting process works.

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Clear, ongoing communication and response timescales

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In order to help with transparency and the management of people’s expectations when making a report, The National Theatre produced a simple flowchart that clearly depicted what happened when people made a named report, what happened when making an anonymous report or a report on behalf of someone else. They recognised that breaking down the barriers to reporting, particularly among freelancers was the fragility of their careers and the knock-on consequences of reporting. By providing this level of clarity and how reports are handled has allowed people to make an informed decision about how they want to report.

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They have also clearly communicated who receives the reports and how they are triaged, providing reassurance to their workforce that it isn’t their direct manager or head of department who will be reading the reports.

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Along with the flow chart the National Theatre have been very clear with their workforce about their response times in relation to making a report, recognising that most reports happen at the end of the day when shifts finish and therefore have a maximum of 2-day turnaround, but often respond much quicker.

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Other methods they have implemented include:

• The Stage Management Team building into all welcome meetings for cast and crew how to report inappropriate behaviour and signpost to Report + Support.
• Posters with QR codes throughout rehearsal rooms and dressing rooms.
• QR codes on every front-of-house staff members’ lanyard.

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Using the data to make improvements

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Having access to ongoing data means that things are no longer anecdotal and removes the guess work by giving them the ability to drill down into the data to identify problems and prevention methods.

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They have been able to layer their data on top of CIISAs data and really uncover trends and patterns down to what shows drive poor behaviour more than others, the impact of drinks promotions upon behaviour, through to the nuances of letting in latecomers and their hot drinks policy – all of which directly impacts their front of house staff.

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“With access to the reporting data, we feel like we've spoken up quicker about what we're planning rather than waiting until next quarter when we announce this. We’ve reflected and thought, actually, if we're getting a lot of reports, let's talk about this now."

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For example we had in development staff training on micro-aggressions and discrimination, the rollout had been imminent but being able to say ‘We know people are concerned, this is coming’ has been able to reassure people that we are listening, we are taking it seriously and it helps to build momentum.” – Sarah Dean, People, Policy & Engagement Partner

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Culture Shift features that mattered the most to the National Theatre

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Two-way messaging – the National Theatre rated this as a non-negotiable feature of the Report + Support platform. They wanted everyone to have the option of anonymous reporting, but their freelance working group wanted to be able to ask follow up questions whilst remaining anonymous. The National Theatre also wanted the option to follow up with anonymous reporters in order to signpost to further support if needed.

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A responsive, agile, UK based partner that understood the sector – a UK based partner that understood the sector was important to the National Theatre. They had heard of our work with the higher education sector, and their largest teams are front of house who are generally recent graduates and therefore used to the reporting culture of universities. The National Theatre praised our agility and genuine desire to support them in driving culture change.

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Phone and desk-based reporting mechanism – the assumption is that people are working in offices all day every day and at the National Theatre, that’s far from the truth. They have workers on the shop floor, in the workshop and are rarely desk based. Therefore, a platform that was available on the go was an important deciding factor.

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Data – The ability to not only collect data but in-depth data that can be drilled down into specifics has been instrumental in driving culture change at the National Theatre. The ability to provide quarterly reports to their board has been instrumental in assessing culture change and ROI.

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Security, safety and encryption – security was a big issue for the National Theatre but they were put at ease by our encryption levels, secure login, commitment to data security and ISO27001 certification.

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“In terms of security and encryption, the Culture Shift platform goes above and beyond. It’s so much more than we had expected for a system like this, which is reassuring for us, our workers and our stakeholders’ - National Theatre Cyber Security Expert

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Results

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Since implementing Culture Shift, the National Theatre has seen an increase in lower level of behaviours being reported and an increase in face-to-face conversations also happening.

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Sarah says “Yes, we've got a reporting system and yes, we've got a way of reporting anonymously, but interestingly, we’ve actually seen our face-to-face "Can I have a quick word" type conversations increase because it's created a speak-up culture, which I think is really positive.’

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These increased reporting levels have helped them build a fuller picture of what is happening, giving people the courage to speak up in person and putting their names to reports, along with continuous anonymous intel of what is happening in the National Theatre.

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