Retaining your top events staff is critical to the success of your business, as it improves your ability to deliver the high quality events your customers expect. Unfortunately, the events industry typically experiences a very high turnover rate, making it challenging to maintain the high standards necessary for your business to grow and thrive. In fact, employee turnover is one of the greatest challenges facing the events industry.
There are a variety of reasons why turnover is so high among events staff:
High employee turnover not only impacts the way your events venue operates, but it has a significant impact on your profitability. Depending on your specific circumstances, the cost of this turnover can range from between 16% to 150% of an employee’s annual salary. When these costs fall on the high end of this spectrum, it can be devastating to your business.
There are both direct and indirect costs associated with events staff turnover. Direct costs include the cost of interviewing, hiring, onboarding and training new employees. But indirect costs associated with this turnover will also impact your bottom line. These indirect costs include:
For these reasons, it’s critical that you make a concerted effort to retain your event staff. The following tips will help you minimize employee turnover and keep your best workers longer.
The events industry isn’t for everyone. It’s a fast paced work environment that can often become stressful. In addition, many events are held on nights and weekends, forcing your employees to work odd hours. It’s important to ensure you’re hiring people who are the right fit for this type of work environment.
If you do your own hiring, spend time during the interview process asking candidates questions that will identify whether they’ll be a good fit for events work (and whether they’ll actually enjoy it). You can also work with an events staffing agency who can supply you with candidates that they’ve already vetted and trained. Working with a staffing agency often increases the likelihood that you’ll end up with the right staff for your venue.
One of the ways to prevent this is to make a concerted effort to make your employees feel appreciated. Giving them regular praise and recognizing them for a job well done will help you establish a positive work culture that makes employees more likely to want to stay.
This praise can be as simple as thanking your team for their hard work at the end of each shift. It can also involve shouting out employees who went above and beyond so that they’re recognized for their efforts. It can even go as far as the occasional gift card to show appreciation after a busy run of events where your staff is working long weeks on a regular basis.
These little things will demonstrate to your team that you care about treating them well and providing a positive work environment. This goes a long way towards keeping morale high when the job becomes challenging and stressful.
While compensation isn’t the only reason people take a job, it’s still an important component of the decision. Everyone needs to be able to pay their bills and have enough additional money to enjoy their desired lifestyle. If their wages aren’t providing this ability, they’re likely to seek a different job that will pay them more money, even if they really enjoy your work environment.
If you want your staff to stay, you’ll need to pay them at least as well – if not better – than other events venues in your area. This is especially true with the rampant inflation we’ve experienced recently. This can involve increasing your hourly pay rate to adjust for cost of living increases. If you’re able to offer benefits such as health insurance, you may want to consider including this in your compensation package, as it will make your venue a more attractive place to work.
By creating opportunities for your team to advance and move into team leader or manager roles, it provides an incentive for your stronger employees to stick around and seek promotion.
When your staff is prepared for what each event entails, they will most likely feel less stressed during their shift. Since high levels of stress often fuels employee turnover, setting expectations prior to each event can go a long way towards making the event run more smoothly and minimizing the stress experienced by your team.
At the start of each shift, hold a brief staff meeting to establish expectations. This may include the specific responsibilities assigned to each employee for the event, as well as any special instructions or requests made by the client.
Even when you take all of the steps discussed above, it’s possible that you’ll experience high turnover on occasion. When this happens, you may need to replace a significant number of employees on short notice to ensure your events run smoothly. Xclusive Services can supply you with the quality events staff you need, even on short notice, to make sure you maintain the high standards your guests expect.
At Xclusive, we can address just about any staffing need you may have. We can supply a few workers if several employees called out sick unexpectedly right before an event, or we can staff an entire team for a large event when you’re understaffed. If you’ve recently had high levels of turnover, we can supply you with long term events staff that will fill these roles on a more permanent basis. We can also supply events team managers who can come in on short notice and run your events smoothly without direction.
You’ll also benefit from our Xclusive Excellence™ commitment, which ensures you:
To learn more about how Xclusive Services can help address your event staffing needs, please request a quote, or call a local office for immediate staffing needs.
