8+ Sample Event Staffing Plan

What Is an Event Staffing Plan?

The practice of hiring qualified applicants for specific positions inside an organization or firm is known as staffing. Recruiting the right employees is only the beginning of your employment strategy. Onboarding, training, succession planning, employee satisfaction, and, ultimately, business development are all influenced by it. Through an event staffing business plan, you can come up with criteria as a means to follow through with the pre-event planning staffing process. You can avoid hiring staff that is unfit for the event and can instead, focus on finding ones that can positively contribute not only to the event but to their coworkers as well.

Different Types of Staffing Plans

A staffing plan is a well-thought-out roadmap for ensuring that your company is fully staffed in the long run, to prevent downtime or production loss due to retirement or another staff turnover. Staffing strategies differ from one company to the next, depending on the industry, the size of the company, the expected growth, and most of all the events necessary to have them. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for properly staffing your company, but with careful preparation and study, you can build a talent pipeline that is ready to fill gaps as they arise.

Short-Term Staffing: A short-term staffing strategy focuses on the company’s current needs. If you own a retail store, for example, and the holiday shopping season is approaching, your short-term hiring strategy would be to hire seasonal workers. For short-term employment needs, many companies turn to a temporary workforce, especially if the demand is only for a single project or a short period.Long-Term Staffing: Taking a proactive approach to your company’s personnel needs is what long-term staffing entails. The majority of long-term staffing plans are for at least a year. Consider prior turnover, employees who may be retiring or taking maternity or other leave predicted growth, and underperforming personnel when determining such staffing needs. You can build a plan to assist recruit the right personnel if you have a clear picture of your predicted staffing needs.Employee Succession Planning: Once they have dependable managers in place, many business owners become complacent. If you lose a key member of your management team, this false sense of security might cause severe downtime for your company. Many firms use succession planning to avoid this. Should you suffer management turnover, succession planning allows you to thoroughly grasp the duties and responsibilities of your management team so that you can train internal candidates to be ready to step into a promotion right away.Strategic Staffing Models: Strategic staffing entails a mix of short-term, long-term, and succession planning. This strategy takes into account the company’s business ambitions to guarantee that talent objectives are accomplished. Considerably, coming up with an event staffing plan can be included in a strategic staffing model because you are going through specific procedures to ensure that the staff hired for the event are fit for the role.

Consider These Points Before Hiring Event Staff

When planning an event, it’s important not to ignore the critical element of who will be on hand to help. The event’s crew has an impact on the overall experience. Finding the best employees, however, isn’t as simple as you may think. So, when you recruit workers for your next event, keep these crucial considerations in mind. Don’t think that you just have to fill the job positions in event planning, instead, you have to thoroughly see to it that they are the best ones for the task. One misjudged role may or may not ruin the event if they are not properly aware of their responsibilities.

Understand the Regulations with Hiring Event Staff: You must understand that while hiring employees for even a single event, you must follow specific rules and regulations. These norms and regulations differ depending on a variety of factors, including your area and whether you plan to hire an agency or recruit individuals. These are simple regulations to keep you in check. Make certain that each person signs a contract. When it comes to event staffing, you want to prevent any scenarios that could get you in legal trouble. If you want to stay legal during the event planning process, you will need a signed contract.Know Your Event Budget: The type of employees and the number of staff members you can have at your event will be determined by your budget. Talk to potential staffing agencies to obtain a sense of how staff costs are computed. It’s necessary to set aside a significant percentage of your money to hire staff for large-scale, VIP, or black-tie events. Prepare a budget that’s big enough to cover all charges, including unexpected ones. There are always unforeseen event costs, as there are with any event. A flexible budget ensures that the event will go on as planned, even if something goes wrong. See this site’s available budget template to make one.Understand the Client’s Event Expectations: Even if your event budget is limited, employing event staff is still an option. When you are dealing with a limited budget, concentrate on acquiring more qualified employees who can match your client’s expectations. Think about what you will ask the employee to do. Such as their former work experiences and if they have already worked on events similar to yours. The accomplishments that have the necessary certifications to do the job. Your requests may increase the bill depending on what you anticipate the event personnel to do. Clarify your client’s expectations and hire the right people to meet them.Thoroughly Interview Candidates: When it comes to finding event employees, openly speak with a variety of agencies and possible employees. The more candidates you interview, the better informed your decision will be. Set clear expectations if you intend to hire just individuals. You can better qualify and vet the candidates who walk through the door if you outline precise standards. If you are going to hire an event staffing company, be explicit about what you want. The agency can search its employee database for someone who fits the bill. You may ensure that you are interviewing event personnel who suit the needs of your event by being explicit.Communicate with Your Event Staff: When arranging an event, the value of strong communication cannot be overstated. Because attendees will be dispersed across the event, having a structure in place that everyone is acquainted with and comfortable with is critical. Every team operates uniquely, so you must discover out what works best for you. During the months of planning, communication should be frequent; once a week is a good place to start. It should grow increasingly frequent, even every day, in the weeks leading up to the event. This keeps everyone informed about any modifications and holds everyone responsible for their part in the final event.Hold a Staff Meeting at the Event: Setup should have started at least 24 hours before the event’s scheduled start time, if not more, depending on the size and complexity of the event. Once everyone is in place, start by hosting a team meeting with everyone involved, from the caterer to the setup crew to the toilet personnel. Discuss the event’s final details and double-check that everyone is ready to go and knows what they are doing. Include a motivational talk to get everyone pumped up for the days ahead. Set your communication plan in motion and be prepared to respond to anything that requires rapid attention, and trust that everyone is doing their job.Do a Wrap-up after the Event: It’s always a good idea to hold a discussion or meeting with the key actors involved after the event is finished and proves to be a success. Discuss both the things that went well and the things that you believe could have gone better. Make sure to gather their input as well, so you have a whole picture. This is a wonderful rule of thumb for any event because it shows your strengths while also identifying areas to improve in the future. Make sure to be wary of the tone you use, you would not want to sound too pretentious or condescending.

How to Write an Event Staffing Plan

Recruiting and filling event staff positions takes time, so failing to plan ahead and then trying to hire someone when you need those talents yesterday can put you behind schedule. It will be much more difficult to hire employees in places where there are skills shortages. A strategic staffing plan considers the company’s event goals and the capabilities required to achieve those goals. A successful event planning team structure should go beyond headcount changes to identify the additional skills and knowledge your company needs while being mindful of the internal and external requirements.

Step 1: Set Goals and Strategy

It’s tough to ensure you have ideal staffing and employee development levels and to meet your goals if you don’t have a clear plan for where the business is heading, as well as measurable targets. As a human capital management specialist, you must collaborate with all departments of the company to build a vision for how your product or service will evolve and alter in five and 10 years. But particularly for the event, you have to keep in mind that everyone wants it to end up as a success. And that goes to say that ensuring that throughout the event, no mishaps occur.

Step 2: Analyze Your Current People Management Landscape

After you have created a strategy, you will need to assess your current people management scenario. You will need to know how long certain jobs take so you can figure out how many workers you will need in certain roles. One topic to consider is whether abilities are easily available and employable. If you want to receive an accurate view of your present workforce performance, you will need accurate data. Creating survey questionnaires to discover what your employees believe about their performance is one of the greatest ways to acquire access to essential data.

Step 3: Forecast Optimal Staffing Levels

Forecasting appropriate staffing levels takes into account not only how many personnel with specific talents you will need, but also how much money you will need to manage the event. If you don’t have enough money to engage full-time staff, contractors or freelancers may be an option. The trick is to arm yourself with as much internal and external data as possible. Predicting the future is impossible, but you may utilize facts to make your best guess. Examine your system’s past data to assist you to determine future workforce levels. Examine how past events have influenced staffing numbers and utilize that as a starting point for estimating future levels.

Step 4: Conduct a Gap Analysis

The final phase in building a staffing plan is to assess the areas where you currently lack the necessary capabilities to fulfill your objectives. This analysis considers not just the skills supply within your organization, but also the skills supply in the market, allowing you to decide whether to hire or upskill to address the gaps. You might discover that you have an excess of particular skills after you have analyzed your data. You can try to retrain workers with these abilities if possible, but if that isn’t possible, you may have to fire them.

FAQs

How many people do you need to staff an event?

The general rule of thumb is that a 10×10 booth should have at least two staff members, plus one for every 1,000 show visitors, or one for every 100 square feet of the booth area. There are various means to employ numerous staff for an event, be it contacting an employment agency or hiring a freelance or contractor for the event. All you need to remember is the budget given to you by the company. It should also be pointed out that an event should not be overstaffed as is it understaffed.

What are the important aspects of staffing?

These aspects include recruitment and selection, staff orientation, staff development, performance management, and separation. Employers use these efforts to ensure that employees succeed in their jobs and those job vacancies are kept to a minimum. When a company pays attention to its staffing plan, it can clearly define not just the number of personnel required, but also the mix of talents and experience required to do the job. A staffing model template can account for unforeseen circumstances such as low and high work volumes. It’s basically a simple human resources management goal that keeps your company on track.

Why is it important to have a staffing plan?

The goal of workforce planning is to help the company achieve its business objectives and strategy. The current and future staffing demands of the organization are affected by identifying the organization’s business strategy as the company’s mission and vision. This means, among other things, that small enterprises are doing a lot of hiring. It also means that if you haven’t already become a hiring expert, you will almost certainly have to do so in order to stay competitive in your area, develop your firm, and have a chance of competing with larger organizations for top talent.

During an event planning staffing agency, event management team members are involved. You can’t just hire staff for an event right away. There is due process involved and along with that is a careful selection to make sure they are adequate for the task you are employing them with. Now that you have gone through the article, you are more than ready to write an event staffing plan.