The Hidden Cost: Section 1
The work that
doesn’t exist
The extent and impact of ‘hidden’ digital labour in the cultural sector.
We’ll answer the following questions (and some more)
- What actually counts as hidden work?The technical, relational and maintenance labour that no job plan ever accounts for.
- Why does it stay invisible?How the work disappears from view — often even to the person doing it.
- Where does it come from?The reasonable-looking decisions that quietly pile work onto individuals.
- What does a real week look like?An interactive look at the hidden hours buried inside a 40-hour week.
Chapter 1
Before we dive in
As I will describe over the course of this report, the digital platforms, services, and outputs of cultural organisations depend, to a large extent, on work these organisations do not properly plan for, understand, recognise, or resource.
It is often invisible to everyone beyond the person doing it.
This hidden work takes many forms and that breadth is part of what makes it so hard to describe effectively and to understand.
Some of it is technical, such as filling the gaps between what systems can do and what the organisation needs them to do, or technically adjacent, like when someone has to understand and remember why things are built or configured the way they are.
Some of it is relational, for example managing the expectations of colleagues who don't understand why something is complicated, translating between teams who use different language, or making the case for why something is worth doing in the first place.
And some of it is just maintenance, the unglamorous, ongoing work of keeping things running that only gets noticed when something breaks.