Why Workforce Management Software is Vital for Event Managers

In the highly-competitive events industry, organizations are always looking for something that gives them an edge and which makes their event seamless.

Organizers know that hardworking and dedicated staff members or volunteers are often the invisible difference between an event being good or great – but managing this workforce, especially a large one, is a very big job. This is where good software can make all the difference.

One example of good software recently launched specifically for workforce management in the event market is GetScheduled. This is an online tool that uses a cloud-based system to give administrators scheduling capabilities, options to communicate directly with individual staff members as well as the ability to import or export data. In addition this particular software package is scalable, since it takes into consideration the size of the workforce and their specific tasks / needs – the upshot is you lease a system that suits your event.

The GetScheduled team has developed its employee scheduling and volunteer management software following years of experience in the events industry, so they know exactly what organizers need to be able to do. Consequently their system has been built to ensure easy access to vital resources including scheduling, messaging and creating online reports.

GetScheduled’s Managing Director, Sue Payne, explained ‘We are experienced event managers as well as software engineers. Having worked on some of the world’s biggest events, including several Olympic Games and World Cups, we were looking for a solution that worked for us as well as our clients. These varied from a fairly straightforward system to ensure volunteers were in the right place at the right time, to highly complex briefs that saw us look after everything. When we discovered that there wasn’t anything on the market that was good enough, we built our own! We soon realized what we had would work very well for other companies in sports event management.’

Whilst good software has enormous benefits for management, it is fair to say that volunteers and staff also appreciate an efficient system. Features such as accessing information remotely can greatly reduce the number of calls or emails to the project team. In addition, the ability for management to generate automated notifications or specific correspondence to individuals (or groups) results in employees only receiving the information relevant to them. This makes it easier for them to understand exactly what they should be doing, where and when.

Clearly staging an event is seldom inexpensive so it could be difficult to persuade your boss to spend on workforce management software, but whilst a pen and paper may be cheaper, ultimately good software is a better investment.