The year 2022 is here and for many of us, large events are back! Everything from the Summer Olympics to Coachella to the NYC Marathon to Octoberfest has been cancelled the past two years, but the world is finally opening back up again. For event planners across the globe, this means getting back to work—with a few extra hurdles.
People are eager to get back to both working at and attending events with the addition of sanitizing stations, increased levels of cleanliness, and other safety precautions in place to keep everyone healthy. It doesn't appear that COVID-19 is going away anytime soon, so that means managing and controlling the spread as best as possible—while also hosting a killer event that your attendees will enjoy.
The CDC recommends you hold your event outdoors if possible, and prevent crowding. This may entail, for example, modifying the layout of the stage or installing physical barriers to enforce physical distancing, where applicable. If this sounds like even more work for you, you're right. That is why we recommend easing your burden in other areas, like staff scheduling or managing vaccination statuses.
Attending events in the ways they were known in the “old normal” isn't the only thing that has changed. The workforce has gone through significant change over the last two years. In a big way, the story of event planning in 2022 is also the story of the gig economy. This is a shorthand way to categorize people who work freelance, side jobs, and short-term contracts. And there are a lot of them, 60 million people to be exact.
When you're planning your upcoming event, chances are pretty high you'll be engaging with workers in the gig economy, like bartenders, servers, artists, security personnel, drivers, and more. In years past, you may have worked with full-time employees but now you're scheduling dozens upon dozens of event staff on a short-term basis and managing vendors who are working their side job to make your event a success. This adds an extra layer of stress for you, because you have to make sure all of these moving pieces come together perfectly.
Scheduling for events takes time, and this was true even before the COVID-19 virus made nearly every aspect of life more difficult. Yes, we have large events back again, but we also have virtual and hybrid events to manage as well.
Thanks to modern technology, We can work, learn, teach, spend time with friends and family, and even host a large party without being in the same place. Many in the industry plan to host their events with at least a hybrid option, so people who don't feel comfortable attending in person or who are ill can still partake in all the fun. Hybrid events will continue for the rest of 2022 at the very least, adding an extra layer of planning to your already-full plate.
The number of events that you have, the number of people you need to schedule within it, and the number of tools you need to monitor it can all combine to make your job pretty overwhelming. It doesn't have to be this way! It is quite possible that instead of an extra set of hands, what you need is better event scheduling software.
Let's say you have a big event in the works. You have 200 security personnel signed up, all of which need to be vetted and have their background check run. There are also bartenders and other workers who need to be scheduled and managed. You can't handle this alone, and you don't have to.
One of the biggest challenges for managers scheduling staff for large events is the sudden changes needed when someone tests positive right before a shift. There's an opportunity with the right event scheduling software to very quickly be able to move resources to where they need to be, without conflict and without exceeding the number of hours that they're allowed to work or their availability. It's easy to feel like it's an emergency when someone calls out sick, but when you can quickly and efficiently fill their spot, it won't be! You're able to reassign their shift, and the event goes on completely unaffected.
Speaking of COVID now is a great time to point out that many in the event planning industry need to keep track of the vaccination status of dozens, if not hundreds, of employees or volunteers. The right event scheduling software enables you to do this easily, as long as it is HIPAA compliant.
Our platform can help you in the challenges of event planning, especially as it applies to scheduling, background checks, and vaccinations. We're HIPAA compliant, and offer COVID management as well. This means if a virus outbreak were to occur at your event, your event scheduling software would make it much more simple for you to see who was possibly exposed, contact them, and make new arrangements for future shifts if the event has yet finished.
You don't need to handle the challenges of event planning in 2022 alone any longer. We look forward to being able to help you! If you want to learn more about how our event scheduling software works and how it can make your life easier, contact us today.