Temp Workers, Permanent Success
Are your Temps Putting your Best Face Forward?
by Lee Nold-Lewis | Published in April 2007 Event Currents
Event staff management is relatively new in the event planning industry. Prior to the early 1990s, it simply didn’t exist. If you were planning a meeting or convention, you hired a staffing agency or worked through the convention and visitors bureau to get temporary workers to staff the event. The results were predictably lackluster, because there was a critical element missing: management.
Yes, there were usually “supervisors” who checked people in and maybe coordinated lunch breaks (or maybe not). But there was nobody to mold this group of random individuals into a team, train them, set standards, develop esprit de corps, resolve issues or instill principles of client service.
As events become increasingly sophisticated, however, planners need to realize that management standards and ethics are just as important in event staffing as they are in any other aspect of business. Your temporary staffers may be together for only a few days, but during that time, the client (you) deserves exemplary service, attendees deserve to be treated like visiting royalty, and the staff deserves to be properly supported and treated with respect.
Do Set Recruiting Standards
Recruiting is where it all begins. As the old adage from the computer industry goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.” If recruiting standards are not high, the quality of the staff will be poor.
Think carefully about the kind of person who makes a good event staffer.
Start by thinking through how you want your visitors and exhibitors to feel. You want them to feel welcome, you want them to feel that their needs are important, and you don’t want them to be confused, frustrated or angry. It follows that the ideal event staffer must be friendly, helpful, organized and informed, and understand the concept of service and stay cool under pressure. It’s also important that the staffers be reliable, professional and well-groomed, which makes them more approachable.
Clearly, the ideal event staffer is a specific kind of person, so choosing a random group of people from the pool of available temps will not fit the bill. Instead, create a template of the ideal staffer and develop a recruiting process to assure that each person has the necessary skills and personality traits.
Do Set Performance Standards
Even if you have recruited a team of outgoing, friendly, service-oriented individuals, you cannot expect them to intuitively know how to behave on-site at an event. You must have clear standards for performance, and every member of the team must know what these standards are.
For instance, staffers must understand what to do when there’s a problem. Give them clear procedures to follow (“first ask these questions, and if you can’t help, consult your supervisor”), and instruct them in how to respond if someone is angry or rude (“always be sympathetic, never lose your temper, try to help them solve the problem”).
Once people understand what your standards are, most will try hard to meet them.
Staffers also need to know logistics, such as when to be on-site, how to check in and what the consequences will be for not following procedure. Does every little detail have to be spelled out? Yes. It is unfair to expect temporary workers to understand how to operate in your environment unless it is all laid out for them.
Don’t Skip Training
Training — critical to success — assures that everybody on the team understands your standards, expectations and procedures. Even if some staff members on the team have worked for you before on the same event in the same city, it’s imperative that all staff members undergo training prior to an event — every time. All events are different, and the same event can be different from year to year.
Training has another, more subtle purpose. It’s an opportunity to build enthusiasm, create bonding and motivate the staff to do their absolute best. It helps for them to know that to the attendees, they are the organization sponsoring the show, not just “temps.” This esprit de corps has a very real, if intangible, effect on performance, helping the staffers to create an overall positive environment onsite.
Although event staffers may only be a team for a short amount of time, they’re like any other group of people: They need management to build in accountability, for support and to keep the event rolling smoothly. A hands-on, on-site manager can spot trouble areas and fix them, bring on additional staffers if needed, and in many cases, solve issues before they become problems. Staffers don’t have the global view of the situation nor the authority to do any of this.
Do Incentivize
Temporary staffers respond just as enthusiastically to job incentives as full-time employees. Yet it is rare that anyone thinks to apply this well-understood management tool to temporary workers. If you want to drive higher performance from your event staff, you need to give them a reason to strive for excellence beyond just feeling virtuous. Incentives such as recognition (certificates, service pins, etc.) and cash bonuses are highly effective incentives.
Do Create Continuity
Institutional knowledge is valuable. People who know the ropes make fewer mistakes, require less training and supervision, and are able to help others who have less experience. That’s great, you may say, but how does that apply to event staff management, where the team is different every year?
The point is that the team doesn’t have to be different every year. If you hold your event annually in the same venue, take note of the staffers who do an exceptional job, and invite them back every year. If your event goes to a different venue every year, do the same — when you come back again to Dallas or Orlando, make sure you know who the best people are in those cities, and recruit them first.
Don’t Treat Temps like Temps
When all is said and done, the same management techniques and precepts apply to temporary workers as to full-time workers. The problem seems to be that in general, temporary event staffers are not treated like permanent employees. To get the most out of these important members of your event team, standards must be set and communicated, a clear set of ethics must be in play, and temporary staff must be managed using the same techniques that work well in other settings. It is in the best interest of the event planner, the organization sponsoring the event, the staffers — and ultimately, the entire events industry — to set a higher standard.