All industries face HR challenges. But that doesn’t mean that those challenges are the same. The world of events, for example, brings with it unique and specific obstacles for people professionals. The good news is that these are surmountable.
Hiring
The events space is unusual in that there are long periods of preparation followed by spells of intense work over the course of just a few weeks. That doesn’t mean those long periods aren’t intense, too, though: the industry is well-known for having a high-pressure, deadline-focussed work style. It’s relative.
What this means is that new hires need to have excellent time and energy management skills as well as the range of mental, practical and social skills needed for their particular role. HR professionals have a leading role to play in making sure potential employees understand the demands of the role and have the autonomy and experience to hit the ground running and apply their time and energy effectively from the off.
Training
That said, none of us is the finished article, and there are all sorts of reasons why you might hire someone who isn’t yet the finished article. For example, they might have other skills that you haven’t looked for, but which could be complementary in your organisation. You might want to bring someone on board who can help to shape your culture. And you might just need to hire quickly. Training, therefore, should be a key focus of HR professionals in events.
Moreover, when you’re running events for thousands of people, packed together in a single place, it’s absolutely vital that you can trust your team to be able to manage things. Training helps us not just to develop skills but to increase self-confidence, and that’s important when you’re responsible for a large number of people in a high-pressure working environment.
Mental and emotional wellbeing
There are few things more satisfying than pulling off a great event. Seeing and hearing thousands of people having a fantastic time and really benefiting from the work you’ve done makes all that work (and the stress it brings) worth it. But that hard work and stress is still there, and it can increase the risk of exhaustion and burnout – something HR professionals must bear in mind.
Burnout is a particular risk, as it is in any high-pressure job. During the Covid pandemic, it was reclassified by the World Health Organisation as a syndrome due to its origin in chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. This is a good thing: it’s helped to remove some of the stigma connected with it. There was a time when it was treated almost like a cold that could be ‘fixed’ with a day of rest or a relaxing weekend. Now, we know that the key to avoiding burnout is regular communication, occupational support, and managing your workload. It’s really important that HR professionals working in events understand this challenge, and that they understand, too, that our stress tolerance levels are different, and there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ amount of stress to feel.
Accessibility
We always strive to make our events as accessible as possible – to make information, activities and environments usable for everyone who comes to our events, regardless of who they are or what their circumstances are. This is at the core of our approach. We want our events to reflect our commitment to DEI.
But it does take work, and that can be intimidating for HR professionals working in events. People working in HR need to communicate with attendees to understand their needs and wants. They need to make information easy to find and understand. And they need to help to provide a range of support services and resources. This may involve working across departments, with senior leaders and the marketing team, for example. But it will also involve taking an ‘always-learning’ approach, so that the evolving requirements of attendees and potential attendees can be anticipated and accommodated.
Last thoughts
It’s important to note that this is a non-exhaustive list. New HR challenges emerge all the time. But existing challenges also fall away. Advances in technology have been hugely beneficial to events, increasing accessibility and the quality of communication, and making hiring and training much more straightforward. Either way, it’s almost a cliché that our most satisfying accomplishments come from overcoming big challenges. And in my view, the satisfaction that comes from designing and running great events, and leaving thousands of attendees happy and enriched by their experience, makes any struggles worthwhile
