Staffing a hybrid event is more than just filling positions. Since the event staff can make or break an event, it’s essential to think strategically.
This article, excerpted from our eBook "Keeping Up With the Connectors: The strategies, tactics, and tools from the minds behind Cvent CONNECT" walks you through the process of staffing Cvent CONNECT Hybrid 2021, sharing the best practices documented along the way so that you can apply them to your event.
View Event Staffing as a Strategic Initiative
Event staffing is more than simply finding people to do jobs. It’s core to your event strategy, as it’s the people behind your event that make a great experience possible. While strategically staffing a hybrid event is critical, it needn’t be complicated. Let’s walk through a few of the strategic considerations we took into account at Cvent CONNECT so you can use them to create an effective event staffing strategy of your own.
Historically, we've run our conferences with all in-house staff. We had people scheduled by the minute—they might run from speaking in a session to scanning people at the door for a breakout room. Over time, we've learned this method leaves team members scattered without fully utilizing their strengths. As a result, we’ve adopted a strategic approach to provide the most significant impact for both attendees and staff.
With Cvent CONNECT being hybrid this year, staffing became more complex because we needed staff to manage in-person and virtual events. The result was a hybrid staffing solution that consisted of onsite staff, virtual staff, internal staff, and outsourced staff.
Apply It to Your Event
To help determine your strategic needs, ask yourself questions such as:
- What is the value this position is going to offer to the conference?
- Is the purpose purely functional, or is it an opportunity to win business?
- Can I train someone quickly and efficiently to fulfill this role?
- Do I need to leverage an expert to have the most impact?
Develop an Event Staffing Process
In order to strategically staff your hybrid event, it’s essential to have a clear process defined. An effective event staffing process will ensure all key roles are covered and that you have the right people doing the right jobs.
That said, hybrid event staffing needn’t be complex. The process can be as simple as assigning a staffing lead and developing a playbook to address staffing needs.
In large organizations, a cross-functional team can take the leading role; at smaller companies, it can be an individual. For Cvent CONNECT, we used a core staffing committee to guide recommendations and a playbook to elicit requirements from each department. We were able to be more strategic about staffing because our system helped us clearly define what roles we needed to fill and identify who could best fill them.
The committee served as our go-to resource, with members bringing their diverse perspectives to the table. We had members from many different departments: sales, marketing, customer service, and technology.
Pro Tip: If you don’t have a formal committee, consider using a group chat tool like Slack or Google Chat to simplify gathering cross-department feedback.
Once our committee was in place, we used a simple three-step playbook to talk to the program owners about their needs and determine open positions. First, we identified program areas. From there, we identified what positions were open in each area. Finally, we detailed the requirements for each position. Using this standardized approach made it easier to build the entire staffing plan.
Apply It to Your Event
Cvent’s simplified staffing playbook calls for three critical sets of information. Answer these three questions to identify staff requirements for your event:
- What are the program areas, both in-person and virtual?
- What staff positions do we need within each program area?
- What are the requirements for each position?
Consider the Needs of Both Virtual and In-Person Audiences
When staffing a hybrid event, you have to consider the needs of each audience. Consider each type of experience and cross-check what skills are needed to serve each audience effectively
Staffing hybrid events can be tricky. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution because two experiences are happening simultaneously. Some things made sense when we looked at each experience as a separate entity. However, when we looked at the two overlaid with one another, it completely changed how we were going about things.
When you're thinking about the in-person audience, be sure you're also thinking about virtual and what it means for them—and vice versa. It was hard for us to do this for the first time. At every turn, we discovered things we had completely overlooked. For example, how did we not think about time zones?
Ultimately, we mapped out the experiences and the program areas within each respective experience. We had to break it down to make it digestible, not just for us but also for our stakeholders. We needed to be able to communicate our staffing needs clearly and simply for others to understand.
Apply It to Your Event
Answer these questions to ensure you’re cross-checking the staffing needs of both experiences:
- Are the experiences happening at the same time?
- Are the audiences experiencing the same thing?
- Are the calls-to-action different for the audiences?
- What support needs and staffing positions are associated with each experience?
- Do those positions require a different skillset or different expertise for each experience?
- Are there considerations for geography or time zones?
As an example, let’s look at the Cvent CONNECT virtual booths: We needed someone to staff the chat, and we needed someone to meet with attendees. Taking that a step further, the necessary chat staff had to be customer-facing and have a broad knowledge of Cvent CONNECT and the Cvent platform. This example is for one role for one tiny piece of one section of the event. It’s essential to keep these details in mind when assigning people to every position because, together, they shape how your entire event will turn out.
Want to learn all the best practices for a great hybrid event? Download "Keeping Up With the Connectors: The strategies, tactics, and tools from the minds behind Cvent CONNECT" to learn hybrid design, staffing, reporting, and more!
