Effectively planning a successful event requires the cooperation of the entire organising team, its suppliers, consultants, volunteers, and any other entities involved in the event. And for major events, these groups can easily expand to thousands of people, working together to form the workforce for the event.
Keeping control of so many moving parts is a complex and difficult task, which is why we’ve developed a range of workforce planning examples, templates and checklists. They’re designed to help organisers ensure that their workforce is fully equipped to meet all the event’s needs.
The first step is involves understanding what workforce planning entails and its importance in events – explore the workforce planning process within the events industry here. After that, it’s time to start planning your own workforce – and that’s where these templates can help. Whatever the stage of your planning process, our templates guide organisers from the initial strategy to the day-to-day monitoring of your workforce.
What is a workforce planning template?
A workforce planning template serves as an all-encompassing tool upon which your event’s workforce can be built. It prompts you to consider all the essential questions for a successful workforce plan, helping you to build the right teams across all functional areas.
Templates can provide various workforce planning techniques to support your overall workforce plan. For example, one template might identify skill gaps within your existing team, ensuring new hires align with your event’s needs. Alternatively, another template can be used as a log or checklist, providing insight into past decisions and enabling you to analyse successes or shortcomings.
Example workforce planning strategies
There are several stages involved in planning an event’s workforce, each with their own factors to consider. That’s why we’ve created a series of specialised templates to help with each phase of the process.
Strategic workforce planning guide
Strategic workforce planning involves considering many different factors, opportunities and challenges simultaneously, which can be difficult to juggle. That’s why our strategic event workforce planning template is designed to consolidate all the relevant information in one place.
Download the full template here.
Functional area checklist
Nobody is an expert in everything, and it’s crucial to have specialists who can effectively manage their specific functional areas. Make sure you consider every aspect of your event with our simple checklist.
Download the full template here.
Dot planning
Dot planning is a widely used method to visualise workforce distribution across an event, venue, or site. It has traditionally involved stickers on large, printed maps or using software such as PowerPoint or Visio. However, purpose-built software like Iventis can streamline dot planning, simplifying the ‘who’ and ‘where’ of your personnel.
You can find out how to build a dot plan in the Iventis Planner in our blog, or book a demo with one of our experts to learn more about dot planning functionality in the platform. The result is a clear visual outline of your workforce, such as the one in this example of Wembley Stadium.
Onboarding and contingent workers checklist
The structure of an event workforce is unique, due in part to its reliance on contingent workers. This brings benefits and challenges, but hiring managers must ensure an organised and efficient onboarding process for everyone.
This reaches far beyond confirming contracts are signed; event organisers must provide the necessary knowledge and background information to ensure that contracted workers can effectively complete their duties. To help set contingent workers up for success, take a look at our onboarding checklist.
Download the full template here.
By events professionals, for events professionals
We designed each of our templates with events in mind, offering guidance as well as space to add specific notes or categories that are important for your event. By using our workforce planning models, event organisers can ensure that their workforce strategy and plans are right, every time.
For bespoke advice about how the Iventis Planner can support your event, book a demo with one of our experts.
